NEW YORK, NY - JUST Capital, along with media partner CNBC, today released the 2023 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies, including the marquee JUST 100. The Rankings are the only comprehensive evaluation of how the nation’s largest corporations perform on the Issues that matter most to Americans today, including creating jobs in the U.S., paying a fair, living wage, acting with integrity at the leadership level, supporting workforce retention and training, protecting worker health and safety, providing benefits and work-life balance, protecting customer privacy, minimizing pollution, and more.

Out of the 951 analyzed companies, Bank of America is America’s Most JUST Company for the first time, having risen steadily in the Rankings over the past five years, from #104 in 2018 to #71 in 2020 to #5 in 2022, to the #1 spot in the 2023 Rankings. Bank of America’s standout leadership on Workers Issues – particularly its efforts to pay all employees a fair, living wage – especially drive this high performance, as well as its work to offer sustainable financing products, eliminate barriers for hiring, and prioritize board diversity and independence. This year, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Accenture, Truist Financial, Verizon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Apple, Intel, and JPMorgan Chase round out the top 10.

“This recognition reflects our commitment to Responsible Growth,” said Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America. “That includes all we do to be a great place to work: Investing in our teammates and creating opportunities to help them grow and develop their careers. At the same time, by delivering Responsible Growth we help create jobs, develop communities, foster economic mobility, and address some of society’s biggest challenges.”

Year after year the Rankings show that the companies that score best on the Issues Americans care about most outperform their peers. Compared to their Russell 1000 peers, companies in the JUST 100 on average:

• Created 12,318 more jobs in the U.S. from 2017 to 2021.
• Pay 8.6 percentage points more of their workers a family-sustaining wage (72%).
• Are 2.8 times more likely to have conducted a pay gap analysis and 6.5 times more likely to disclose pay gap analysis results.
• Provide 9 more hours of career development training per employee.
• Offer 2 more weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers and 1 more week of paid leave for secondary caregivers.
• Recorded 42% fewer workplace incidents.
• Are 2.9 times more likely to disclose workforce data by race, ethnicity, and gender.
• Are 5.9 times more likely to have conducted a human rights impact assessment.
• Are 4.2 times more likely to publicly commit to not selling customer data.
• Donated 2.5 times more in charitable giving.
• Intake 79% less water per revenue dollar.
• Emitted 42% less metric tons of CO2 per revenue dollar.
• Are 95% more likely to tie ESG performance to executive compensation.
• Had a 4.5% higher profit margin, 2.3% higher return on equity, and paid 5 times more in dividends.

As of December 30, 2022, our JUST 100 Index (JUONE) that tracks the top 100 ranked companies outperformed the Russell 1000 by 13.3% since inception.

For the annual Rankings, JUST Capital collects and analyzes corporate data to evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 Issues identified through comprehensive, ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior. JUST Capital has engaged more than 160,000 participants, on a fully representative basis, since 2015.

Crucially, across every demographic surveyed – political affiliation, race, gender, age, or income group – Americans are united in wanting companies to prioritize Workers as the most important stakeholder and Pays a fair, living wage as the most important business Issue today. Over the last six years, Americans have consistently prioritized Worker Issues most highly among all 20 Issues JUST Capital tracks and measures, and this year that outcome has become even more pronounced. Paying a fair, living wage has more than doubled in priority since 2020 (from 9% to 21%), and four of the five Worker Issues regarding wages, health, training, and benefits are among the top six priorities of the public, reinforcing that these issues have become increasingly critical in the minds of American workers and consumers.

“There has never been a more important time for businesses to step up, do right by their workers, and restore trust in capitalism and the American Dream,” said Martin Whittaker. “This year’s JUST 100 and Industry Leaders demonstrate that just business truly is better business.”

CNBC will delve into the data, highlighting company-specific results and showcasing key performance stories about this year’s JUST 100 leaders across the network’s broadcast and digital platforms at cnbc.com/just100. A comprehensive interactive ranking and benchmarking platform is available at justcapital.com/rankings.

About Our Methodology

Since 2015, JUST Capital has surveyed over 160,000 Americans – representative of the U.S. adult population – on what they believe U.S. companies should prioritize when it comes to just business behavior. JUST Capital’s latest Issues Report – which includes responses from 3,000 respondents – uses a Max-Diff discrete choice modeling technique that asks Americans what business behaviors are most and least important to defining a just company and then assigns a weight to each based on the probability that a respondent would choose that issue as most important. Those Issues become the foundation by which JUST Capital tracks, analyzes, and incentivizes corporate behavior change. The organization evaluated 951 companies across 20 Issues, five stakeholders, and 245 unique data points to produce the ranking model that drives America’s Most JUST Companies, including the JUST 100 and Industry Leader lists. The selection of companies draws from the Russell 1000 Index, which represents over 90% of the U.S. stock market value. For additional information visit: Our Methodology.

About JUST Capital

JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit dedicated to measuring and improving corporate stakeholder performance – from fair wages to workforce diversity to climate commitments – at America’s largest public companies. Our mission is to tackle the most pressing social challenges of our time by galvanizing the collective power of corporate America. We believe that business and markets can and must be a greater force for good, and that by shifting the resources of the $19 trillion private sector, we can address systemic issues at scale. Guided by the priorities of the public, our research, rankings, indexes, and data-driven tools help deliver on the promise of an economy that works for all Americans. JUST Capital publishes the annual list of America’s Most JUST Companies, the JUST 100, in partnership with CNBC. To learn more, visit: www.JUSTCapital.com.

About CNBC

CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news, providing real-time financial market coverage, business content and general news consumed by more than 547 million people per month across all platforms. The network’s 15 live hours a day of news programming in North America (weekdays from 5:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC’s global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC’s highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also offers content through its vast portfolio of digital products such as: CNBC.com, which provides financial market news and information to CNBC’s investor audience; CNBC Make It, a digital destination focused on making you smarter about how you earn, save and spend your money; CNBC PRO, a premium service that provides in-depth access to Wall Street; a suite of CNBC mobile apps for iOS and Android devices; Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri voice interfaces; and streaming services including Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Samsung Smart TVs. To learn more, visit  https://www.cnbc.com/digital-products/.

Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world’s leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 68 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 3,900 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 56 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BAC).

Reporters may contact:

JUST Capital
justcapital@berlinrosen.com

John Yiannacopoulos, Bank of America
Phone: 1.646.855.2314
john.yiannacopoulos@bofa.com