The JUST Capital Foundation, in partnership with Forbes, has released its 2020 ranking of the hundred most socially "just" companies in the United States.

Based on a survey of more than four thousand Americans, the report found that the issues that were most important to the American public with respect to corporate behavior were that they pay a fair wage; act ethically at the leadership level; provide benefits and a reasonable work-life balance; make products that are not harmful to people's health, the environment, or society; and provide equal opportunity. An assessment of how each of more than nine hundred U.S. companies performed on twenty-nine weighted issues ranked Microsoft first overall for the second consecutive year, followed by chipmaker NVIDIA, which moved up from sixth place in 2018; Apple, up from sixteenth place; Intel Corp., down two places from second in 2018; Salesforce.com, up from twenty-ninth place; and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, down from the third spot in 2018.

Now in its third year, the latest JUST 100 list includes rankings by industry, with Microsoft (software), NVIDIA (semiconductors and equipment), Apple (technology hardware), Alphabet (Internet), Anthem (healthcare providers), PayPal (commercial support services), BlackRock (capital markets), Etsy (retail), JPMorgan Chase (banks), and Starbucks (restaurants and leisure) topping their respective verticals. Individual issue categories were topped by NVIDIA (workers), Apple (customers), UPS (communities), human resources software provider Workday (environment), and Anthem (shareholders).

According to the analysis, companies on the JUST 100 list pay their median workers 31 percent more on average compared with companies in the Russell 1000, pay a living wage to 11 percent more of their workers, are four times more likely to have conducted gender pay equity analyses, are 2.5 times more likely to publish workforce demographics, have 25 percent more women on their boards, donate 8.4 times more to charity, are 32 percent more likely to have established environmental policies, and have a 6 percent higher return-on-equity.

All of America's Most JUST Companies will be included in Goldman Sachs Asset Management's JUST U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF — the first-ever exchange-traded fund based on "just" business behavior.

"We're working hard to prove that we can be a great citizen and be a great company at the same time," Etsy CEO Josh Silverman told Forbes. "And candidly, if you can't do both, where are we as a society? It's a pretty fatalistic thought that you can't be a profitable and good company."

(Image credit: JUST Capital Foundation)