Lightcast company hierarchies are designed to represent how employers operate in the labor market, rather than to provide a complete legal ownership tree.
The hierarchy is organized around the highest operating company in a corporate family. We refer to this as the operational ultimate parent. Non-operating holding companies may be maintained in the database, but they do not replace the operating company as the primary point of reference for labor-market analysis.
Operational ultimate parent
Lightcast's ultimate_parent is intended to identify the highest operating company, not necessarily the highest legal entity in an ownership chain.
For example:
Holding Company
↓
Operating Company
↓
Subsidiary
↓
Branch
The holding company may be represented in the database, but the Operating Company can be the ultimate_parent for the subsidiary and branch because it is the highest entity conducting the relevant business operations.
This differs from financial or legal company datasets, where ultimate parent may refer to the highest controlling legal entity regardless of whether it has meaningful operations.
Company roles
Each company record has a role that describes how that record functions within the Lightcast company structure.
Headquarters: The primary operating company within a hierarchy or operating group. A headquarters may also own subsidiaries and therefore act as a parent in the hierarchy. Lightcast uses the term headquarters because it is a familiar operational concept. It should not be interpreted solely as a physical headquarters address.
Holding: A legal entity whose primary purpose is to own or control other companies rather than conduct the operating activity associated with the corporate family. Holding companies are present in the database but are generally not treated as the operational ultimate parent. However, the ultimate parent of those companies will be defined as the operational headquarters under which they operate.
Subsidiary: A separate legal entity controlled by another company. Subsidiaries are retained separately where they represent meaningful operating or labor-market activity, such as distinct hiring, locations, or employer identity.
Branch: A location or operating presence of another company that is not treated as a separate legal company. A branch reports operationally to a headquarters or other operating company.
Standalone: An operating company for which Lightcast has not identified a parent relationship within the company hierarchy. This may represent a company that operates independently or a company for which a parent relationship has not yet been identified.
Hierarchy fields
The role field describes what a company is within the Lightcast model. The parent fields describe how records are connected.
immediate_parentfields - Identify the company directly above the record in the operational hierarchy. If there is only one parent level, for example, a branch reporting directly to a headquarters, theimmediate_parentandultimate_parentfields contain the same company information. If the record does not roll up to another operating company, these fields repeat the record's own company information.ultimate_parentfields - Identify the highest operating company in the hierarchy to which the record ultimately rolls up. Non-operating holding companies are not treated as the operational ultimate parent. If the record does not roll up to another operating company, these fields repeat the record's own company information.
For subsidiaries, a parent relationship generally represents corporate ownership or control. For branches, the relationship represents an operational connection to the company responsible for that location.
How to interpret the hierarchy
Lightcast hierarchies combine two related types of relationships:
Ownership relationships, such as parent-to-subsidiary
Operational relationships, such as headquarters-to-branch
As a result, role = headquarters and being a parent are often overlapping concepts, but they are not identical. role describes the company's function in the Lightcast model, while immediate_parent and ultimate_parent provide the hierarchy used to connect and roll up companies.
The hierarchy should therefore be interpreted as an operational view of a corporate family for labor-market analysis, not as an exhaustive legal ownership structure.