This briefing, The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight, quantifies, for the first time, what many in the field have long believed: the EO opportunity is massive. It represents an investment opportunity of one trillion dollars in the United States alone! As a point of comparison, the U.S. private credit market holds about $1.1 trillion in assets under management. Financing employee ownership transitions could mobilize capital on a similar scale—drawing not only from private credit and traditional bank lending, but also from catalytic, evergreen, and other flexible sources.
Our research builds on a research brief by Matt Mazewski at the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University which paints a striking picture: there are 1.2 million companies in the United States employing 58 million people–a third of the US civilian labor force–that are potential candidates to transition to employee ownership. This research is also informed by numerous conversations with experts in the field as well as our own analysis.
Beyond the scale of the investment opportunity, what makes this so exciting is the transformational potential—not just for capital markets, but for the economy more broadly. EO is a powerful wealth-building mechanism for people who have been shut out of asset ownership opportunities. Our estimates suggest that if 20% of the businesses identified in the Rutgers study converted to 100% employee ownership structures, it could lead to $3+ trillion in wealth built for over 11 million working people in a generation. These conversions wouldn’t just improve individual outcomes—they would also strengthen businesses and the broader economy.
To move from possibility to practice, investors must understand which segments of this opportunity are relevant for them, and the broader field must clearly outline what it will take to shift capital toward this opportunity. That includes clarifying risk and return expectations, identifying the barriers investors perceive, and building the infrastructure to help capital move at scale. Read the briefing to learn more about the opportunity, what it means for workers, the types of capital needed and guidance on where to go from here.
