DDespite a steady beat of promises about skills-based hiring, the majority of companies have not increased their hiring of entry-level and non-college workers in 2023, according to a newly released study. ranking of the Best Companies for Career Advancement, which also found that 60% of employers surveyed reduced promotion opportunities in the last year.

The third American Opportunity Indexa project released Monday by the Burning Glass Institute, the Schultz Family Foundation and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work project, offers workers a ranking of the top U.S. companies that offer the best opportunities to advance their careers.

Unlike other company rankings, it does not rely primarily on employee surveys or employer-submitted data, but rather on independent analysis of the career trajectories of more than 5 million employees in 395 large companies. The study draws on the Burning Glass Institute’s database of career histories of more than 65 million U.S. workers, representing more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce.

“What we can say is that despite the growing support for skills-based recruiting, most companies have made no progress, or even taken a step backwards” when it comes to hiring workers without a college degree, Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, said in a statement. e-mail.

However, the study found that employees at companies in the top 100 earn more and are more likely to be promoted, and those companies are 180 percent more likely to hire workers without college degrees than companies . lower in the ranking.

Topping this year’s ranking are companies from a variety of industries, including top employer WW Grainger, the industrial supplies company, followed by Costco Wholesale, Capital One Financial, Meta Platforms and ServiceNow to round out the top five. JB Hunt Transport Services, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MetLife and Bank of America round out the top 10.

The analysis found that companies in energy and resources-related sectors (oil and gas, utilities, and metals and materials) saw the largest average gains in the index this year, although companies in 30 sectors are represented among the top 100 companies. (The index only publicly shares an overall ranking of the top 100 companies, and also identifies which companies were among the top 100 in terms of compensation, hiring, culture and promotion.) In 2024, the index added year-over-year measures of promotion and hiring progress, as well as company culture sentiment scores from Glassdoor.

This year’s analysis found that only 80 out of 395 companies increased their promotion opportunities, and a large number of companies (174 out of 395) reduced their hiring of people without college degrees or significant work experience.

“As talent becomes more available, some employers are moving away from considering candidates without a degree, despite their promises,” Sigelman said. “This means that the substantial progress workers have made in recent years is fragile. »

He added that the longer workers stay in their jobs, the more opportunities workers have to enter and advance in their careers. Even if the volume of layoffs remains low, he said, “employers worried about the economic situation are reducing their hiring.” As AI makes it appear that more entry-level tasks will be automated, this could also have an impact. Sigelman said, “This pushes them to focus on recruiting experienced people. »