The Management Explosion

Something remarkable has happened to the American managerial class. In 2014, the BLS counted 6.4 million management workers across 38 detailed occupations. By 2019, the number had grown modestly to 7.2 million. Then, between 2019 and 2024, it surged to 11.0 million — an increase of 3.77 million management positions in five years, a 52.4% growth rate that dwarfs every other major occupation group. Over the same period, total US employment grew from 134.2 million to 147.8 million, a gain of 10.1%. Management grew five times as fast as the overall economy.

The result is a structural shift in the American labor force. Management occupations now account for 7.4% of all employment, up from 5.7% in 2014 and 5.4% in 2019. For every 13.5 workers in America, one is classified as a manager. That ratio was 1-in-17.6 just five years ago. To put it in physical terms: if you work in an office of 100 people, there are now roughly seven or eight managers among you, up from five or six before the pandemic.

Some of this growth reflects legitimate economic expansion — more companies, more projects, more complexity requiring coordination. But part of it almost certainly reflects a broader phenomenon that organizational theorists have studied for decades: the tendency of bureaucracies to expand their administrative layer over time regardless of whether the underlying work demands it. The late anthropologist David Graeber called them “bullshit jobs” — positions that exist primarily to perpetuate the organizational structure rather than produce tangible output. Whether or not one accepts that framing, the data is hard to reconcile with any proportional increase in the complexity of American business: a 52% increase in managers alongside a 10% increase in total employment suggests that we are managing the same economy with dramatically more management.

The payroll numbers make the point even more starkly. Management’s $1.55 trillion in annual compensation is the highest of any major occupation group — exceeding healthcare practitioners ($987 billion), business and financial operations ($925 billion), and office and administrative support ($914 billion). The weighted mean wage of $141,757 makes management the highest-paid major group in the economy, surpassing even Computer and Mathematical Sciences ($116,806). One in every $10.50 of wages paid in the United States goes to someone with “manager” in their title.

No single occupation in the American economy has added more jobs in the past five years than General and Operations Managers. In 2019, there were 2.40 million of them. By 2024, there were 3.58 million — an increase of 1.18 million positions, a 49.3% growth rate that defies easy explanation. To put that in context: the net job gain in this single occupation between 2019 and 2024 exceeds the total employment of the entire Computer and Mathematical Sciences group (5.19 million) by a factor that suggests the US economy minted a new general manager every 2.2 minutes for five straight years.

General and Operations Managers now constitute 32.7% of all management employment and 2.4% of the entire US workforce. They earn a median of $102,950, which sounds substantial until you notice the mean of $133,120 — a 29.3% gap that is the second-highest mean-median divergence of any large management occupation. As we explored in Episode 6, a large mean-median gap signals right-skewness: a large group of general managers earns around $100,000, but a long tail stretches into much higher compensation that pulls the average up. The 10th percentile of $47,420 confirms the breadth of the category — some “general managers” are running gas stations and Subway franchises, while others oversee billion-dollar business units.

The breadth of the General and Operations Manager category is itself a clue to its growth. The BLS defines this occupation as those who “plan, direct, or coordinate the operations of public or private sector organizations, overseeing multiple departments or locations.” That description is so encompassing that it captures everyone from the owner-operator of a small landscaping company to the COO of a Fortune 500 division. As the economy has grown more complex — more regulatory compliance, more digital systems, more distributed workforces — organizations have responded by classifying more positions under the managerial umbrella. The growth may reflect not more management per se, but a reclassification of roles that previously existed under other titles.

Still, the absolute numbers are staggering. The 1.18 million net new general manager positions since 2019 represent more new jobs than the entire nursing profession added (300,000 net new RNs) and more than the entire software development workforce grew by (roughly 290,000 positions). By sheer headcount, America’s single largest occupation-level investment in the past five years has been in general management.

The management explosion is not confined to one corner of the economy. Every major management specialty grew between 2019 and 2024, and most grew by extraordinary margins. Transportation, storage, and distribution managers led in percentage terms with 61.3% growth (132,040 to 213,000), reflecting the logistics boom driven by e-commerce expansion. When Amazon, Walmart, and the entire last-mile delivery ecosystem scaled up during and after the pandemic, they needed managers for every new warehouse, distribution center, and regional logistics hub.

Sales managers grew 50.0%, from 402,600 to 603,710 — an addition of 201,110 positions. Computer and information systems managers grew 48.9%, from 433,960 to 645,970, mirroring the tech sector expansion profiled in Episode 7 but from the management side. Marketing managers surged 46.0%, from 263,680 to 384,980, reflecting the proliferation of digital marketing channels that each demand their own organizational oversight. Medical and health services managers grew 43.3%, from 394,910 to 565,840, in lockstep with the healthcare machine explored in Episode 8.

In absolute terms, the top five management occupation gains since 2019 tell the story concisely: General and Operations Managers added 1.18 million; IT managers added 212,010; sales managers added 201,110; healthcare managers added 170,930; and financial managers added 163,830. Together, these five specialties account for 1.93 million of the 3.77 million new management positions — 51% of all management growth concentrated in five titles.

The only management occupations that shrank were advertising and promotions managers (−15.9%, from 25,100 to 21,100) and legislators (−49.3%, from 52,280 to 26,510). The legislator decline is almost certainly a classification change rather than a genuine halving of elected officials. The advertising manager decline, by contrast, reflects a real shift: digital marketing has fragmented the discipline, and many functions that once required a dedicated advertising manager are now handled by marketing managers with broader portfolios or outsourced to agencies entirely.

Management is the highest-paying major occupation group in the American economy, but the internal variation is immense. At the top, chief executives earn a median of $206,420 and a mean of $262,930 — a 27.4% mean-median gap that signals a long right tail of extremely high earners. There are 211,850 chief executives in the OEWS data, making them one of the smaller management specialties by headcount but the most expensive per capita. The CEO wage has risen 11.9% since 2019, when the median was $184,460 — a decent gain, but far below what many other management specialties achieved.

Below the CEO sits a tier of specialized managers earning six-figure medians. Computer and information systems managers lead at $171,200, followed by architectural and engineering managers at $167,740, financial managers at $161,700, marketing managers at $161,030, and natural sciences managers at $161,180. These five specialties all exceed $160,000 at the median, placing them comfortably in the top 5% of all American earners. Their wage growth since 2019 has been robust: natural sciences managers gained 24.8%, financial managers 24.5%, marketing managers 17.7%, and IT managers 17.0%.

The middle of the management ladder clusters around $100,000–$140,000. General and Operations Managers at $102,950, construction managers at $106,980, administrative services managers at $108,390, industrial production managers at $121,440, and purchasing managers at $139,510. These are the occupations that most Americans probably picture when they think of “management” — the plant manager, the office manager, the regional purchasing director. Their wages are well above the national median but fall short of the six-figure-plus territory occupied by the specialized managers.

At the bottom of the management ladder, three occupations fall below $70,000 in median wage: food service managers at $65,310, property and real estate managers at $66,700, and preschool and childcare administrators at $56,270. The preschool administrator is especially notable: at $56,270, this occupation earns less than a registered nurse, less than a dental hygienist, and barely more than the national median of $49,500. Running a childcare center — a job that requires managing staff, parents, licensing, budgets, and the safety of young children — is one of the lowest-compensated management positions in America, a fact that says more about how the economy values childcare than about the difficulty of the work.

The chief executive occupies a peculiar position in the OEWS data. With 211,850 workers and a median of $206,420, the CEO appears to be well-compensated but not spectacularly so. The median CEO earns less than a cardiologist ($432,490 mean), less than a surgeon ($371,280 mean), and roughly the same as a general internal medicine physician ($236,350 median). How can this be, when the popular narrative is one of runaway CEO pay reaching hundreds of times the average worker?

The answer lies in what the OEWS data captures — and what it doesn’t. The BLS survey collects base wages and salaries from employer payroll records. It does not capture stock options, restricted stock units (RSUs), performance bonuses, or other forms of equity compensation that constitute the vast majority of total pay for CEOs at large public companies. When Tim Cook’s total compensation is reported as $63.2 million in Apple’s proxy statement, most of that consists of equity awards. His “base salary” — the figure that would appear in the OEWS — is $3 million. The BLS data captures the $3 million, not the $63.2 million.

Moreover, the 211,850 “chief executives” in the OEWS include far more than the Fortune 500. They include the CEO of a 50-person manufacturing company in Wisconsin, the president of a community hospital, the executive director of a nonprofit with a $2 million budget, and the owner-operator of a chain of car washes. The median CEO in the BLS data is not running Apple or JPMorgan — they are running a mid-sized organization where $206,420 in base salary is the full picture. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio that dominates public discourse is calculated using total compensation at the top and base wages at the bottom, which makes it accurate for S&P 500 companies but irrelevant to the 200,000 chief executives who never receive a stock option.

The time series for CEO employment tells another interesting story. In 2014, there were 246,240 chief executives. By 2024, there were 211,850 — a decline of 34,390, or 14.0%. The number of CEOs has been falling even as total management employment has been surging. This likely reflects consolidation: mergers and acquisitions reduce the number of standalone companies (and their CEOs), even as the surviving, larger organizations add layers of management below the C-suite. America is being run by fewer chief executives and more middle managers.

Management is one of the most right-skewed major occupation groups in the economy. As we explored in Episode 6, the mean-median gap measures how much the top end of the wage distribution pulls the average above the midpoint. For management, the gap is revealing. General and Operations Managers have a 29.3% mean-median gap — meaning the mean ($133,120) exceeds the median ($102,950) by nearly a third. Chief executives show a 27.4% gap ($262,930 mean vs. $206,420 median). Property managers show a 24.0% gap.

These gaps are not random. They reflect the fundamental structure of managerial compensation: a large population earns a “base” management wage, but a smaller population at the top earns dramatically more through performance bonuses, profit-sharing, commissions, or simply working at larger organizations where base salaries are higher. The general manager earning $47,420 at the 10th percentile (running a small retail operation) and the general manager earning above the reporting threshold at the 90th percentile (running a Fortune 500 division) hold the same job title but inhabit entirely different economic realities.

The 10th percentile figures across management occupations reveal the floor of each specialty. For chief executives, the 10th percentile is $73,710 — barely above the national median, and a wage that a registered nurse exceeds. For food service managers, it is $42,380 — below the national median, and roughly what a fast-food worker earns at the 90th percentile. For preschool administrators, it is $37,060 — less than a nursing assistant. These floors reveal that “management” at the bottom of the income distribution is not a well-paid job; it is a title applied to people doing supervisory work at wages that barely exceed the workers they supervise.

At the top, the picture inverts. Eleven of the 38 management occupations have no reported P90 value because wages exceed the BLS reporting threshold. These include chief executives, financial managers, computer and information systems managers, sales managers, marketing managers, human resources managers, architectural and engineering managers, natural sciences managers, public relations managers, advertising managers, and compensation managers. In each case, the top 10% of earners make so much that the government’s measurement apparatus cannot capture it — the same phenomenon we saw with physician specialties in Episode 8.

Management’s $1.55 trillion payroll is extraordinarily concentrated. The top three management occupations by employment — General and Operations Managers (3.58 million), Financial Managers (819,000), and Computer and IS Managers (646,000) — together employ 5.05 million workers, 46% of all management employment, and generate an estimated $700+ billion in annual payroll. General and Operations Managers alone, at 3.58 million workers with a $133,120 mean, account for roughly $477 billion — 30.7% of the entire management payroll from a single occupation.

To appreciate how concentrated this is: the General and Operations Manager occupation alone generates more payroll than the entire Food Preparation and Serving group ($491 billion for 13.6 million workers) or the entire Construction and Extraction group ($405 billion for 6.3 million workers). One occupation’s payroll rivals that of entire major groups. This is partly a function of high wages and partly a function of enormous headcount, but the combination makes General and Operations Managers the single most expensive occupation line-item in the American economy.

The wage growth within management has been uneven but universally upward. The largest percentage gains since 2019 went to legislators (+53.1%, but from a very low base of $29,270 to $44,810), natural sciences managers (+24.8%, to $161,180), lodging managers (+25.2%, to $68,130), financial managers (+24.5%, to $161,700), and human resources managers (+20.0%, to $140,030). The smallest gains went to funeral home managers (+0.6%), advertising managers (+1.2%), and general and operations managers (+2.2%). That last figure is remarkable: the occupation that added 1.18 million positions saw essentially zero real wage growth (CPI rose roughly 22% over the same period). The flood of new general managers diluted wage pressure; when you increase supply by 49% in five years, prices don’t rise.

The implication is important. General and Operations Managers experienced volume growth at the expense of pricing power. Financial managers, by contrast, experienced both — 25% employment growth and 24.5% wage growth — suggesting genuine scarcity of qualified financial management talent. IT managers showed a similar pattern: 48.9% employment growth with 17.0% wage gains. The market differentiates between generic management (where supply is elastic) and specialized management (where expertise commands a premium even as headcount expands).

The management explosion raises questions that the OEWS data alone cannot fully answer but that the numbers make impossible to ignore. The first question is definitional: what counts as “management”? The SOC system classifies occupations based on tasks, not on organizational hierarchy. A person classified as a “General and Operations Manager” might supervise 500 people or zero — the classification depends on whether their primary duties involve planning, directing, or coordinating operations. As organizations flatten their hierarchies (fewer layers) while broadening managerial titles (more people with “manager” in their job description), the statistical category expands without necessarily reflecting more actual management.

The second question is economic: is this growth productive? The management share of the workforce rose from 5.4% to 7.4% between 2019 and 2024. Over the same period, US labor productivity (output per hour worked) grew at roughly 1.5% annually — a rate almost identical to the pre-pandemic trend. If the economy added 3.77 million managers and saw no acceleration in productivity growth, the obvious question is what those managers are producing. The answer may be coordination, compliance, and complexity management — valuable activities that don’t show up as higher GDP per hour but that prevent larger losses from organizational dysfunction. Or the answer may be organizational bloat — managers managing managers, producing reports that produce more reports.

The third question is structural: why did the explosion happen between 2019 and 2024 specifically? Part of the answer is the pandemic-era reorganization of work. When millions of workers shifted to remote and hybrid arrangements in 2020–2021, companies added management layers to coordinate distributed teams. A team that once sat in a single office and reported to one manager might now span three time zones and require a project manager, a people manager, and an operational coordinator. Remote work didn’t eliminate management — it multiplied it. The return-to-office push in 2022–2024 didn’t reverse the management growth because the new positions had become entrenched in organizational structures.

Finally, there is the question of sustainability. The tech sector’s 2022–2023 layoffs disproportionately hit middle management — Meta eliminated 11,000 positions in November 2022, and Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called it a “year of efficiency” focused on flattening the management hierarchy. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft followed with similar management-heavy cuts. If the tech sector’s correction is a preview of the broader economy, the management explosion may contain the seeds of its own reversal. Alternatively, if AI tools can replace some of the coordination and reporting functions that managers perform, the 7.4% management share may prove to be a peak. But as of May 2024, the data shows no sign of contraction — only acceleration.