Yes they do! in a recent post by Nonprofit Quarterly:

Preliminary figures for the 2020 pandemic economic downturn, courtesy of researchers at Rutgers University, and the numbers are telling:

Decline in total employment

• ESOP majority employee-owned, mean job loss—4.8 percent
• ESOP majority employee-owned, median job loss—0.4 percent
• All other firms, mean loss of jobs—19.5 percent
• All other firms, median job loss—13 percent

All told, the data shows that ESOPs were 3.63 times more likely to retain non-managers, and 3.95 times more likely to retain managers.

The findings are compiled in a new report, Employee-Owned Firms in the Pandemic: How Majority-Owned ESOP and Other Companies Have Responded to the Covid-19 Health and Economic Crises.

– Rick