Earlier today, we announced our first-quarter results, which included global earnings of $9.5 billion.

This is a large number, but it’s only when you compare it to our revenues that you get a more accurate picture of our profitability relative to other industries.

Our global revenues were $124 billion in the first quarter, which means ExxonMobil earned 7.6 cents for every dollar of sales. That includes every unit of oil, petroleum products, natural gas and chemicals we produced, refined, manufactured and sold.

In fact, our profits per dollar are actually at or below those of many other industries. For example, some companies operating in the computer, smartphone, pharmaceutical, or beverage industries earn about two to three times more per dollar of revenue than ExxonMobil. As the chart shows, these industries average about 15 cents to 28 cents profit per dollar.

The size and volume of our business are significant factors in our earnings results – and they’re also significant factors in our contributions to the U.S. economy.

ExxonMobil’s activities put more than $12 billion back into the U.S. economy in the first quarter through our returns to shareholders, our investments to find and produce energy in the United States, and our local, state and federal taxes.

That’s more than six times what we made from our operations in the United States, and it doesn’t even include our payroll to more than 30,000 U.S. employees or the amounts we spent running our production, manufacturing and office facilities around the country.

Here’s a closer look at who’s benefiting from ExxonMobil’s earnings:

• Shareholders: We distributed more than $7 billion to shareholders through dividends and share purchases in the first quarter. Our shareholders will earn about 20 percent more per share as a result of an increase in our second-quarter 2012 dividend announced yesterday. As a publicly traded company we have millions of shareholders, who are primarily based in the United States. If you have money invested in a savings or retirement plan, or if you have a public or private pension plan, chances are you benefit from oil and natural gas company earnings.
• Federal, state and local governments: Our taxes in the United States totaled $2.9 billion in the first quarter, a total that exceeded our U.S. operating earnings by almost $1 billion. In many states and towns, tax revenues from oil and gas operations are a significant source of funding for schools, hospitals, infrastructure and other public services.
• Construction companies, contractors, manufacturers and others: We invested $2.6 billion on U.S. capital and exploration projects in the first quarter. Our efforts to find and produce new supplies of oil and natural gas are capital-intensive, which means we create a lot of demand for service providers such as construction companies, contractors, materials manufacturers and others.

These figures are just part of our U.S. impact in the first three months of 2012. A look at our contributions over the course of a full year provides a bigger picture of our impact in the U.S. economy. In 2011, ExxonMobil contributed $72 billion to the U.S. economy through investments in new energy supplies, taxes, salaries, returns to our investors and money paid to other businesses and industries to keep our U.S. operations running.

When companies are earning, they’re also spending, marketing, investing and paying. It’s this type of activity that is the engine of economic growth, and the United States needs more of it to get its economy back on the right track.