This page on the employers with the largest number of employees in Center City is brought to you by Schuster Law’s worker’s comp lawyers in Philadelphia.
Often compared to its close neighbor, NYC, the city of brotherly love is often overshadowed when considering some of the largest companies in the nation. Nevertheless, more than a couple of large industries call Philly their home, and we’ve discussed them on this page.
Aramark Corporation
Aramark Corp, or Aramark for short, is a publicly-traded American corporation with a significant presence in the uniform, food service, and facilities industries spanning across multiple areas which include:
- Education
- Healthcare
- Business
- Corrections
- Leisure
Although the headquarters of Aramark is located in Center City Philadelphia, the company also operates across 20 countries, which include Canada, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Germany, the Philippines, and more.
Originally founded in 1936, the earliest years of Aramark dealt with providing services to employees of aviation plants in the southern parts of California. At first, the company’s name was Davidson Brothers but this would change after some decades, first to Automatic Retailers of America (ARA) and later to the contemporary Aramark.
In the modern-day, Aramark’s products have a pervasive reach, from making the scrubs of surgeons and nurses to providing food for school lunches and even stocking stands at stadiums of America’s favorite pastime – baseball.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
The Children’s Hospital of Philly, also known as the CHOP, was the nation’s first hospital dealing exclusively with providing medical attention to children. Founded in 1855, the CHOP has served as the support and foundation for countless medical breakthroughs as well as many firsts in pediatrics.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia makes it their mission to provide safe, advanced, family-centered medical care to every one of its patients. Through this ethos, they’ve fostered medical innovations that have advanced the field of pediatrics and saved the lives of innumerable children. The CHOP’s reputation is such that families from around the world put their trust in the hands of the CHOP’s specialists when it comes to the care of that which they love and treasures the most – their children.
The CHOP also believes that the community plays an integral role in the lives of kids. For this reason, they are regularly involved in and promote many activities for children through the local County of Philadelphia region. Some of their most renowned programs include:
- Adolescent HIV Initiative
- Reach Out and Read
- Youth Heart Watch
- Homeless Health Initiative
Temple University in North Philly
Temple University is a public university that focuses heavily on research. Initially founded in 1884 by Russell Conwell, the university first achieved its institutional status in 1907.
Temple is one of the world’s biggest providers of education for professional tracks, which include law, podiatry, medicine, pharmacy, architecture, and dentistry. It also is recognized for preparing the largest number of professional practitioners in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Temple University has campuses in Center City Phila as well as Rome and Tokyo, and is estimated to have more than 300,000 total alumni across 50 countries worldwide.
Temple’s symbol (and mascot) is the owl, a ‘mascot’ that has been with the school since the very beginning. The first students of the school, before it was an established university, were taking classes at night, essentially making them “night owls.” Evidently, this moniker stuck, and though the owl symbol has been adopted by plenty of other schools and universities, it is the Temple Owl. Victor T. Owl, who was the first of them all.
The School District of Philadelphia
The Philly School District proudly sits at number 8 on the list of the largest school districts in the entire United States. It’s composed of over 19,000 employees who proudly serve more than 200,000 students attending 214 schools. Of these, 149 are elementary, 16 are junior high, and 49 are high schools. The entire city of Philly possesses 300 schools, though the remaining 86 are independently-operated charter schools, though they remain accountable to the School District of Philadelphia.
Previous to the year 2001, the city of Philadelphia itself was in charge of the school district. For decades, funding for each school was determined by property taxes of surrounding properties. Naturally, more affluent areas paid higher property taxes which ultimately led the local schools to flourish. On the other hand, the lower-income areas of the city saw the quality of education decline aggressively. This disparage in funding across schools within the same school district, along with many other issues, led then Pennsylvania Department of Education Secretary Charles Zogby to sign a “Declaration of Distress.”
The momentous signing handed over control of the school district from the city of Philadelphia itself to the State of Pennsylvania. The hand-off was not an easy one, and many private companies were positioned to profit. Unfortunately, as recently as 2007, the desired improvements in quality of education throughout schools were not particularly observed, though it does not appear to have gotten worse, if that can be considered a positive.
Additional Philadelphia Companies Worthy of Mention
Here are some more companies in Philadelphia which employ a substantial number of the city’s residents:
- Trustees of the University of PA
- The City of Philadelphia
- The Federal Government of the US
- Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
- 8 American Airlines Inc
- Southeastern PA Transportation Authority (SEPTA)
- Drexel University
Our Center City Philadelphia Location
Schuster Law’s worker’s comp lawyers Philadelphia, PA are big admirers of Temple themselves, as for many of their cases, they’ve worked with experts, many of which attended Temple in some capacity, whether for undergraduate or graduate programs.
