722 giant companies raked in $2 trillion in ‘windfall profits’ during the cost-of-living crisis

Let’s see how Corporate America is doing at a time when three-quarters of the country say they’re struggling to afford the cost of living, and food prices have climbed to their highest level in four decades: According to new back-of-napkin math by the international charities Oxfam and ActionAid, around 700 companies have pocketed more than $2 trillion in windfall profits since the crisis started—a number that adds up to roughly $3 billion apiece.

To get these figures, Oxfam and ActionAid analyzed the corporate profits listed in Forbes‘s Global 2000, the annual ranking of the world’s largest companies, released last month. They found which corporations posted profit gains since the cost-of-living crisis began in 2021—an especially tough year for most Americans because the pandemic remained in full swing, and food bills were hitting a record high at the same time that inflation was getting serious.

According to the data shared with Fast Company, a total of 722 companies made what Oxfam and ActionAid call “windfall profits” for the years 2022 and 2021. (Profits were considered “windfall” if their average for 2022 and 2021 exceeded the company’s average profits for 2017 to 2020 by at least 10%.) These 722 companies earned a combined $1.1 trillion of windfall profits last year, and $1.09 trillion in 2021.

Who got what?

Nearly a quarter of that extra cash was pocketed by 45 energy companies; 28 drug companies took home roughly $100 billion over the two-year period.

Meanwhile, 28 retailers cleared a bonus $46 billion, and 18 food companies were flush with an extra $28 billion. All told, the charities’ math suggests that company profits rose a whopping 89% for 2021 and 2022, compared to the averages for the prior four years.

“It’s obscene that corporations have raked in billions of dollars in extraordinary windfall profits while people everywhere are struggling to afford enough food or basics like medicine and heating,” Oxfam’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, said in a statement. “Big business is gaslighting us all—they’re hiking prices to make monster profits, plundering people under the cover of a polycrisis.”

Renewed calls for a tax

The findings renewed Oxfam and ActionAid’s calls to tax corporate windfall profits. The groups noted that if those earnings had been taxed at 90%, it would have generated just shy of $1 trillion per year for two years. To quickly contextualize how such additional tax revenue could be used, all of America’s federal student loan debt is about $1.6 trillion. Or $2 trillion could also pay down almost one-fifteenth of America’s national debt.