Berkshire Hathaway employs approximately 300,000 people!

[90-percent]

I heard that yesterday and did enough internetting to confirm it's true.

That is truly mind boggling for merely a holding company. That's a hell of a lot of bonuses they have to pay out to all those money handling masters of financial extraction!

In truth, that's a stupid generalization. They may actually be nurturing for all the companies they own, especially if it includes companies that actually make tangible things, aka MANUFACTURING, which is one of the best wealth creators you can get. I mean, wealth creators that actually benefit the general economy, rather that creating wealth by arcane financial manipulations that have the intrinsic worth of bottled smoke. I think Warren does things for the long haul, instead of high frequency electronic trading measured in milliseconds, which I consider a magnificent piece of Wall Street perversion.

And if all those employees work as hard as the titans of Wall Street, the bill for the year end bonuses probably approaches the trillions!

-90% Jimmy

[vi5]

1. But is that including the companies they own?

I've worked for consumer goods companies that are owned by holding companies. We were freestanding companies, had 4 factories full of several hundred manufacturing jobs each across the country and all the attendant positions that come with that (Human Resources, finance, R&D, procurement, marketing, etc.). Technically we were all employees of the holding company and none of us made millions or got big bonuses except the top handful of execs.

At one point I think BH was one of our holding company suitors.

I'm the first to say that people just shuffling money from one place to another and making millions are a blight on our economy and society. But I'm not sure the example you're using is an accurate one for tha tpoint.

Maybe I'm wrong.

[90-percent]

4. " But I'm not sure the example you're using is an accurate one for tha tpoint"

I agree with you. That's why I said this in my post: "In truth, that's a stupid generalization. They may actually be nurturing......."

I don't think Warren is a vulture capitalist in the same league as a Mitt Romney, who's predatory debt loading practices are a substantial blight on our embattled middle class.

Thanks for the clarity. I now think the 300,000 is the employees in the companies Berkshire owns. And it may be that the actual holding company has a tiny staff unto itself?

-jim

[former9thward]

5. Berkshire only has 24 employees working at their headquarters.

The rest are part of the various companies they own.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/02/25-surprising-facts-about-berkshire-hathaway.aspx

[melm00se]

2. here is a list

(as of June 2011) of the companies that BH owns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Berkshire_Hathaway

wouldn't surprise me, at all, that they employ 300,000 people when you factor in all the companies that they own outright.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Well they need a lot of brain power to come up with the best tax avoidance schemes...

"This particular cash-rich split-off breaks new ground since, to our knowledge, it is the only one in which the investment assets of the distributed subsidiary consist, at least in part, of the stock of the very shareholder to whom the subsidiary's stock is being distributed," Willens wrote on Thursday.[/div
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12529683/1/berkshire-may-avoid-400-million-tax-bill-in-graham-holdings-swap.html