14 DAY TRIAL // A research note by analytics firm Pingdom reveals that Apple’s profit per employee in the past 12 months was $419,528, a figure that puts the Cupertino-based Mac maker way ahead of Google, Microsoft, Intel and other high-profile tech companies.
Pingdom calculated the yearly profit per employee for a selection of big tech companies that are publicly traded on NYSE and NASDAQ, among which Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, eBay, Adobe, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, HP, and Dell are mentioned.
“Apple is not only in the lead, it is in the lead by quite some margin. Its profit per employee is 1.25x that of Google’s and 1.71x that of Microsoft’s,” the analytics firm states.
The reason? As simple as it sounds, it’s Apple’s rapidly growing profits overall.
“Apple has never been as profitable as it is now, not even close,” reads their report.
Combining this year’s chart with the one used in a similar survey a few of years back, readers can easily compare the situation back in 2008 with that of today (pictured above).
The data sources were Yahoo Finance and Google Finance, but Pingdom cautions that they’re techies, not financial analysts. “If you make investments based on this article and end up losing money, don’t blame us,” they joke (but likely with a serious tone).
As the chart shows, Google was the leader of the pack in 2008. Apple hasn’t surpassed because Google’s business isn’t going well anymore, “but rather because it’s going spectacular for Apple,” says the firm.
According to their research, Apple’s profit per employee has grown 2.8x since 2008. Intel’s has doubled, and Google’s has grown 1.8x.
Microsoft’s profit per employee has also grown by 1.3x since 2008, and “Yahoo actually seems to have become more profitable the past couple of years, in spite of all the bad press,” they note.
Companies that have lower profits per employee now than in 2008 include Cisco, eBay, Adobe, Amazon, and Dell, according to the chart.
Also interesting to note is that Apple has added more than twice as many new employees as Google in the past couple of years.