Which is the world's biggest employer?

The National Health Service (NHS) in England is at the centre of a big political row
about its reform. It's often said to be the third biggest employer in the world, after the
Chinese army and Indian Railways. But is that really true?

It's an incredible claim, given how much smaller the UK is than China or India.

And indeed, it is not true.

Sizing up the world's biggest employers, the NHS is revealed to be the fifth largest employer,
with 1.7 million workers across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

McDonald's makes it into fourth position in our list, with 1.9 million employees. However, 80%
of the restaurants are franchises so, strictly speaking, 1.5 million of these people are employed
by other companies, although they all wear the uniform.

Third is the US supermarket chain Walmart, which employs 2.1 million staff - including almost
200,000 who work for the Asda supermarket chain in the UK.

Second place goes to the Chinese military - the People's Liberation Army (PLA) - with forces
numbering 2.3 million.

And the top spot is taken by the US Department of Defense with a cool 3.2 million-strong
workforce. Why is it so big - and so much bigger than the second-placed Chinese military?

In truth, making these comparisons is fraught with difficulties.

The US Defense Department, with its headquarters at the vast Pentagon building in Virginia, is
keen to boast that it's one of the world's largest employers and includes civilian support staff in
its numbers.

Getting a comparable figure for the Chinese military is near impossible.

The figure of 2.3 million which puts it at second place in our list includes active forces only -
not civilian staff, like the US figure.

And that actually makes it the largest active military force in the world, according to Military
Balance, an annual assessment of military capabilities around the world published by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in the UK.

If you were to count only active forces within the US Department of Defense, it would number
1.6 million people and slip to seventh place in our list.

If numbers for its civilian staff were known, it is possible the Chinese could come much closer
to the US, and maybe even overtake them.
But it is not a straightforward exercise even to separate who is civilian and who is military
personnel - the two forces are structured and organised completely differently.

"There are a number of organisations within militaries - you have active forces, reserve forces,
civilians, and also those that might be working as contractors - so it depends really what you're
trying to count when you look at headline numbers," says James Hackett, the editor of Military
Balance.

"What we try and do is look at active service personnel, so those in uniform who are capable
of operating on behalf of the state to fulfil the national security concerns of the militaries.

"One reason that the PLA is large compared to other militaries stems from its composition as a
mainly conscript-based force. Now other militaries in the West and across the world have
moved to volunteer corps."

The NHS might be lower in the global pecking order than people think but it is still big.

It's bigger - just - than the state-run China National Petroleum Corporation, which has around
1.6 million employees and operates in 49 countries.

It's also bigger than the State Grid Corporation of China, which ranks seventh in our list with
1.5 million staff.

Surprisingly, it also has more workers than Indian Railways, which is popularly thought to be in
the top three of the world's biggest employers, but actually languishes in eighth place.

"Languishing" with an admittedly whopping 1.4 million-strong workforce - and with plans to
recruit an extra 100,000 staff this year.

And it's still one place ahead of the Indian Armed Forces, which has 1.3 million people in its
active forces.

The reason China's railway operation does not make the top 10 list is because it's split into
various separate entities.

But Chinese operations do dominate the top 10 list.

Number 10 on the list - behind the Indian Armed Forces - is Hon Hai Precision Industry, better
known by its trading name, Foxconn.

This Taiwanese electronics producer, which has 1.2 million employees, makes well-known
products like the Apple iPad in its vast factories in China, where hundreds of thousands of
people work.

It became notorious in 2010 when news spread that 10 of its workers had committed suicide.
Although these deaths were tragic, an understanding of how massive an employer the
company is makes you realise that this isn't the shockingly high number it seemed.

Suicide rates in China have been put at 15 per 100,000 people per year. The controversial
Foxconn factory employed around 400,000 people.

Ten suicides per 400,000 people isn't unusually high. It's unusually low for China.