PEOs provide services to 173,000 small and mid-sized businesses, employing 4 million people.
There are 487 PEOs in the United States.
The 4 million worksite employees were paid $216 billion in 2020.
The total employment represented by the PEO industry is roughly the same as the combined number of employees for Walmart (United States only), Amazon, Kroger, and Home Depot.
The PEO industry’s 173,000 clients represent 15.3 percent of all employers with 10 to 99 employees.
From 2008 to 2020, the number of WSEs employed in the PEO industry grew at a compounded annual rate of 7.6 percent. This is 7 percent higher than the compounded annual growth rate of employment in the economy overall during the same period.