Some companies offered unusual benefits, such as Arnold & Porter which offers referral fees of $15,000 if employees recommend a potential new hire who gets a job, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where newlyweds or employees who register a domestic partnership get an extra week vacation.

At Houston-based homebuilders David Weekley Homes, employees get their birthdays off.

Compared with 18 companies on the first such list a decade ago, 82 companies on this list offered telecommuting. Ten years ago, 28 companies offered domestic-partner benefits but now the figure is 70, Fortune said. Average pay ranged from a high of $181,099 at Nixon Peabody, a Boston-based law firm, to $33,559 at American Fidelity Assurance Co, an insurance company based in Oklahoma City.

-Ellen Wulfhorst