Ride shares, delivery services and other gig-worker occupations thrive because of a basic economic evolution: Time has become the most valuable commodity on offer today. When new company after new company is an app-based service designed to make life more convenient, consumers grow ever more accustomed to handing off tasks. And beyond fields for tips, little thought generally goes into the pay of the drivers ferrying food and other gig workers hustling to make ends meet.
But only a fraction of the fees paid for such services goes to the people making life easier. While some cities and states have passed laws setting a minimum wage for delivery drivers, people elsewhere or in other industries can be on the clock full time yet still struggling. A federal report out last week found an uptick in full-time U.S. workers who rely on federal benefits to afford such basic needs as food and healthcare — and importantly, there’s been a huge shift in who’s employing them.
Beyond fields for tips, little thought generally goes into the pay of the drivers ferrying food and other gig workers hustling to make ends meet.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office gathered data from 11 states and used census data to extrapolate from there. According to the GAO report, an estimated 13.8 million American adults enrolled in Medicaid, and 10.6 million who live in a household that receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits worked at least part time in 2024. Two-thirds of that group worked full-time jobs, clocking in 35 or more hours each week. Most of these employed recipients of federal benefits worked in some of the lowest-paying jobs in the country, but an estimated 35% of them were employed at companies with more than 1,000 workers.
As The Washington Post reported in its analysis of the GAO data, the top employers of these federal beneficiaries are some of the nation’s biggest and most well-known companies. “The number of Amazon workers relying on the federal programs for the poor nearly tripled between February 2020 and September 2025,” the Post noted, to around 12,346 workers who needed SNAP assistance and 11,338 who had to rely on Medicaid. “And for the first time, ride-hailing and app-based food delivery companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub and Instacart — collectively ranked among the top three employers with workers receiving aid.” Rounding out the group: Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, as well as Dollar General and McDonald’s.
For years, politicians bandied about terms such as “welfare queens” to deride those receiving federal benefits. Against that backdrop, let’s stipulate first that the social safety net exists for a reason. Rather than stigmatizing those who require support, a better approach would be strengthening and expanding such programs to ensure that everyone in need is able to receive the basics to get by. But let’s also note that we’re talking about working Americans who are relying on these federal assistance programs.
This isn’t a knock against workers who are (not so) gainfully employed and drawing on SNAP and Medicaid benefits.
It’s not the beneficiaries who should be embarrassed;a it’s their employers who should be ashamed. The findings include some of the largest companies in the world, which have grown tremendously since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, DoorDash reported roughly $1.9 billion in gross profits. Uber posted $10 billion in net income last year. And Amazon, now the second-largest employer in the U.S., reported $30 billion in net income in the first quarter of this year alone.
These massive corporations are effectively being subsidized by American taxpayers to help keep their employees fed and healthy.
An obvious counterpoint to the GAO’s troubling findings would be the large number of part-time employees that these companies have on their payrolls. “Amazon is one of the largest job creators in the country, so looking at raw numbers instead of percentages is misleading,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the Post. She added that “employers that offer part-time options for those who want them, like we do, are likely to have more people who are eligible” for federal benefits.
The Flex Association, an industry group that represents ride-hailing and delivery apps, likewise told the Post not to overlook the number of part-time workers who “might otherwise fully rely on unemployment insurance or other public assistance” but “can instead turn to flexible work to bridge the gap.” But those points don’t acknowledge that companies are making a choice to pay even part-time workers too little for them to earn a decent living. Furthermore, any argument that raising wages would then be passed on to consumers falls apart when considering that consumers and millions of other Americans are already covering the difference via the taxes that support the SNAP and Medicaid programs.
For years, GOP lawmakers have argued that more stringent work requirements are needed to get people off SNAP and Medicaid and back into the labor force. Those claims have been used to help justify massive cuts to these programs. But the GAO found the number of workers who require federal assistance to get by is growing — and something is deeply wrong if even full-time workers at billion-dollar companies require food and healthcare assistance.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., who requested the GAO update its data, said in a statement: “No one who works for a company making billions in profits should be living in poverty.” But as things stand, these massive corporations are effectively being subsidized by American taxpayers to help keep their employees fed and healthy. It is only right that their tax bills be raised to cover the costs generated by them underpaying their workers.
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