The nation’s largest food retailers, including Walmart, Amazon, Kroger and Target, pay wages low enough for thousands of their employees to rely on taxpayer-funded food assistance programs, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Walmart employed the most workers on public assistance across the 11 states studied, which was commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
The states studied include Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington.
Walmart employed 15,515 workers receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for food and 16,055 on Medicaid healthcare benefits across the 11 states studied.
None of the 10 grocery retailers in the report – Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Target, Stop & Shop, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Walgreens and CVS – responded to emails seeking comment on the report’s findings.
Sanders said taxpayers should not have to subsidize “starvation wages of large corporations like Walmart and Amazon.”
“These corporations are making record-breaking profits, paying their CEOs exorbitant compensation packages and spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich their wealthy shareholders,” he said. “It is beyond unacceptable that these corporations, owned by some of the wealthiest people on the planet, are receiving corporate welfare from the federal government.”
Public assistance grows with retailer profits
The GAO report revealed that from its most recent report in 2020, Walmart has seen its profits increase roughly 47% to $21.89 billion, while the percentage of its workers on Medicaid jumped 55%.
Sanders called out the Walton family, which jointly owns the massive retailer.
“No one who works for a company making billions in profits should be living in poverty,” Sanders said. “This is especially true after these corporations and their multibillionaire owners received a massive tax break from President Trump’s so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ paid for by the largest cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance in history.”
Sanders noted that Amazon similarly saw its profits skyrocket from $11.59 billion in 2020 to $77.67 billion in 2026, while its number of workers on public assistance nearly tripled to 12,346 workers on SNAP and 11,338 on Medicaid across the 11 states studied.
By the numbers
The report also shows that across nine states – Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington – food retailers employed the following numbers of SNAP recipients:
- Walmart – 15,515
- Amazon – 12,346
- Dollar General – 5,187
- Dollar Tree – 4,229
- Kroger – 3,302
- Family Dollar – 1,933
- Walgreens – 1,747
- Target – 1,695
- Taco Bell – 1,569
And across six states – Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Rhode Island – food retailers employed the following numbers of Medicaid recipients:
- Walmart – 16,055
- Amazon – 11,338
- Dollar General – 5,601
- Dollar Tree – 3,265
- Kroger – 2,818
- Target – 2,326
- Family Dollar – 1,845
- Stop & Shop – 1,691
- Walgreens – 1,300
- CVS – 1,209
Sanders noted that across all industries, roughly 13.8 million workers in the 11-state study are enrolled in Medicaid and 10.6 million in SNAP, up from 12 million and nine million in 2020, according to the report.
