Skip to main content
The Morning Star 2026 Conference
Just how does Facebook make its profit?
Despite its tiny staff, the company has enormous wealth. This has as much to do with data-scraping its users as it has to do with another concept Marx detailed: religion

ONE of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a huge increase in social-media use. Facebook alone has seen an increase in total messaging of over 50 per cent in countries most affected by the virus, and use of WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has grown by 40 per cent.

Facebook isn’t a big employer. It has just under 45,000 employees in total — up from just seven individuals when it was launched 15 years ago. But its profits are vast — about $22 billion (£17bn) last year.

And that’s despite its $5bn (£3.8bn) fine for allowing Cambridge Analytica, consultants to President Trump’s electoral campaign, to harvest the data of its users.

That’s about £½ million profit per employee (PPE).

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
General view of the Job Centre Plus on Benalder St in Glasgow
Economy / 21 March 2026
21 March 2026

PHILIP ENGLISH says military spending will not create the jobs young people need — instead, build an economy based around needs, not profit

(L to R) Hans Hess in June 1966 at the York Mystery Plays and Festival in York, England and aged 22 with his mother Thekla, née Pauson in the Summer of 1930 in the garden of their estate in Erfurt / pics (L to R) Virgil Lucky/CC and Alfred Hess (Hans’ father)
Features / 1 August 2025
1 August 2025

The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London

Tents are set up along a freeway in a homeless encampment, May 12, 2025, in Los Angeles
Features / 27 May 2025
27 May 2025

In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

MONEY TALKS: A general view of City workers on Bank Street a
Full Marx / 6 April 2025
6 April 2025
Labour’s fiscal policy is already in trouble. But simply printing money is not a solution, says the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School