The latest issue of Fortune magazine says Wisconsin has an impressive 25 "Fortune 1000" companies, only 36 less than Illinois' 61 and more than Iowa, Indiana, Arizona and several other states.

Johnson Controls, Manpower, Kohl's, Northwestern Mutual Life and American Family Insurance Group are among the companies on the Fortune 1000 list. For Milwaukee companies, Johnson Controls ranked first in the state and 71 over all.

Switching to the "Fortune 500," Fortune magazine ranked Milwaukee as America's number nine city when measuring the number of Fortune 500 headquarters inside its city limits - ahead of cities that will probably surprise you - like San Francisco and Seattle.

The Milwaukee- West Allis-Waukesha area ranked number five in the nation when measuring the number of Fortune 500 companies as a share of the population - just behind the number four Minneapolis-St. Paul region in Minnesota. (Number one is the Silicon Valley, no surprise, made up of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA) Milwaukee, with Northwestern Mutual, Johnson Controls, Manpower, Kohl's, Harley-Davison, Rockwell, Wisconsin Energy Corp., outranked its peer cities such as Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland and even Chicago.

The Fortune 500 is a ranking of the nation's largest companies compiled by Fortune magazine on the basis of 2003 revenue. Wal-Mart was number one on the Fortune 500 for the fourth straight year, with 2004 sales of more than $288 billion, up about 11 percent from 2003.

The Fortune magazine Web site is:

fortune.com/fortune/fortune1000/0,19250,,00.html