New Delhi, June 20 -- Every headline number in this year's Fortune 500 points in the same direction: revenue, profit and market value all hit records. Yet for the first time outside a recession since the list began including service firms in 1995, the companies on it collectively employed fewer people than the year before, shedding 301,049 jobs even as their profits surged.

Nowhere is the shift clearer than at the bottom of the employee count and the top of the rankings.

Galaxy Digital, a New York-based digital asset firm, broke into the Fortune 100 this year at number 76 with a staff of just 700, a fraction of what any other company in that tier carries; the next-smallest employer within the top 100 has nearly eight times as many peopl...