Utilities

Utilities cooperatives provide electric, telephone, and water services. Table 4-5 shows that the U.S. has 4,525 utility cooperatives; 1,970 provided us with data. These “reporting” cooperatives have nearly 20 million memberships that account for $119B in assets, $36B in revenue, 118,244 jobs and >$4B in wages. Cooperatives that provide electric utility services dominate this aggregate sector in terms of total economic activity, but many water cooperatives provide valued services to their communities.

We report only on firms for which we have collected economic data (some firms did not respond to our requests for information), so these numbers represent lower bounds regarding the full economic footprint of cooperatives in this aggregate sector. As described in the previous section, we extrapolated to the full population for the purpose of conducting our impact analysis. As a consequence, the sum of direct impacts in following subsections will be larger than the corresponding aggregate variables reported here.

Table 4-5: Utilities CooperativesSummary of key variables
Economic Sector Reporting Total   Estab.   Assets Revenue Wages   Employees Memberships
  (firms)       (million dollars)   (thousands)
Rural Electric1 889 920   2,052   111,786 34,275 3,757   67.37 16,652
Generation and Transmission 66 66   198   42,490 2,246 721   11.16 854
Distribution2 823 854   1,854   69,296 32,029 3,036   55.21 15,798
Rural Telephones 158 255   255   5,116 1,520.84 521   12.61 964
Water 923 3,350   3,350   2,240 603 47   0.415 2,066
Cooperatives and Mutuals 567 2,228   2,228   1,401 350 24   0.395 1,753
Associations 355 1,122   1,122   839 253 23   0.21 312
Total 1,970 4,525   5,657   119,142 36,399 4,325   80.37 19,682
 
Rural Electrics totals adjust for G&Ts
1A residential meter defines an electric cooperative member (there may be multiple consumers at a single meter).
2Distribution systems include rural electric cooperatives (RECs), public power districts (PPDs), and mutual electric distribution companies.
Figure 4-5: Combined Distribution of Utility Cooperatives