Jobs Remain Stable in Employee Stock Ownership Sector of Economy

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - June 11, 2015) - Highlighting new data from the most prestigious social survey in the U.S., the General Social Survey (GSS), the Employee Ownership Foundation today focused on convincing evidence that showed employees in the U.S. who had employee stock ownership were less likely to be laid off than employees without employee stock ownership.

The GSS -- the 2014 GSS is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago -- found that 1.3% of employees with employee stock ownership, which includes the ESOP model and other forms of employee ownership, said that they were laid off in the last year compared to a 9.5% rate for employees without employee stock ownership.

Additionally, the survey found about 22.9 million U.S. citizens own stock in the companies in which they work.

"The 2014 GSS data demonstrates, as did the 2002, 2006, and 2010 surveys, that men and women in companies with broad-based employee stock ownership have more sustainable jobs than companies that are conventionally-owned," said Employee Ownership Foundation President J. Michael Keeling. "Not to be dismissive of our national leaders who all claim to be the best at 'job creation,' it would seem to be equally important to promote vigorously national policies that result in more Americans keeping their jobs."

The Employee Ownership Foundation provided significant funding for the GSS's series of questions on shared capitalism. Shared capitalism is defined as broad-based employee, current or deferred stock compensation programs, such as ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans), stock purchases, stock options, gain sharing, profit sharing, and bonus programs. The shared capitalism series of questions were developed and analyzed by well-known employee ownership researchers, Dr. Joseph Blasi and Dr. Douglas Kruse at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University and Dr. Richard Freeman at Harvard University. The researchers are continuing to analyze these and other related data from the Survey to shed light on the role of employee stock ownership in the U.S. economy.

"Not only do our national leaders, and think tanks, need to be considering a proven policy of job sustainability, but also given our nation's growing concentration of wealth in the top 1% of our citizens, having more Americans own productive assets is important, and it is imperative that broad-based employee stock ownership be front and center of our national debate over how to have more of our citizens own stock in our capitalistic society," Keeling added.

The Employee Ownership Foundation is The ESOP Association's affiliated 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting employee ownership. More information: www.employeeownershipfoundation.org.

Founded in 1978, The ESOP Association is the national trade association for companies with employee stock ownership plans in America. The ESOP Association represents over 1,500 ESOP companies. More information: www.esopassociation.org and www.esopassociationblog.org.