COOP News - The USA’s National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA-Clusa) has published its latest report on the sector, revealing that the country’s top 100 co-ops had a joint revenue of US$324bn in 2023. The Co-op Impact report collects impact data and stories from close to 100 cross-sector co-ops, illustrating the diversity of the country’s 65,000 co-ops.
US co-ops are active in sectors including finance, with 4,6000 credit unions serving 142 million customers and employing more than one million people. These credit unions have doubled small business loan volume from 2010 to 2020. Around 52% of credit union CEOs are women, 10 times higher than the rate of women CEOs at banks.
Worker co-ops have become more popular in recent years, with the number of worker co-operatives tripling in the past decade. The USA is home to over 750 worker co-ops which generated over $483m in annual revenues in 2023. According to the report, these co-ops show high rates of ethnic, racial and gender diversity and have a 1:1.45 pay ratio between lowest and highest earning workers, compared to 1:344 in large US corporations.
Energy is another sector where co-ops have a strong presence. About 900 consumer-owned electric co-ops deliver power to 42 million US residents in 48 states, spanning 56% of the nation’s landmass and 42% of US electric distribution lines.
Another important co-op sector is agriculture, with two million American farmers members of more than 2,100 agriculture and retail purchasing co-ops. Farm co-ops generate about $297bn in total gross business volume each year, and employ nearly 200,000 people.
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