Job Creators Still at Top of Forbes 400

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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There may be a few financiers and hedge fund managers at the top of the Forbes 400 rich list. Most of the people on it, however, are individuals who have founded or run companies that have created and maintained tens of millions of jobs, or are the relatives of people who have done so.

Bill Gates of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (NASDAQ: BRK) and Larry Ellison of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) top the list. They are followed by two members of the Koch family, who own one of the largest private companies in America. Three of Sam Walton’s children are among the top 10. And, the eighth richest person on the list, Sheldon Adelson, runs casinos.

The only financier among the top 10 people on the Forbes list is George Soros. At least it took him decades of work to create his wealth, even if he did little to add jobs to the American economy.

Relative newcomers to the list also have started companies with large employee bases. This includes Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Micheal Dell of Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. Each either founded or runs a tech company. They are part of the services sector that has created jobs and continues to do so as the U.S. manufacturing base keeps eroding.

The rich are different from you and me. They create significant numbers of jobs.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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