“Low-Wage 20” Report Spotlights Corporate Giants Paying Poverty Wages

Many workers employed by the largest low-wage corporations in the U.S. are dependent on public benefits to access food or health care because their pay is so low, according to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

The report, titled “America’s 20 Largest Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis,” also found the lowest-paying S&P 500 corporations that primarily exploit U.S. workers — Amazon, Autozone, Best Buy, Dollar General, Lowe’s, FedEx, Home Depot, Kroger, Starbucks, Tyson Foods, Target, and Walmart, among many others – are contributing to the national affordability crisis while rewarding their CEOs with astronomical pay.

The report notes that, in 2024, 15 of the “Low-Wage 20” corporations paid workers less than $35,631 per year, which would make a three-person family eligible for Medicaid in most states. Thirteen of the 20 companies in the report paid below the $33,576 per year threshold for a family of the same size to be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Only five companies on the list paid workers enough to earn incomes above the Medicaid/SNAP thresholds — however, none of the Low-Wage 20 paid enough to help a family of three earn enough to pay for a two-bedroom house or apartment to rent, the report found.

Indeed, when adjusted for inflation, half of the Low-Wage 20 corporations included in IPS’s report are now paying their workers less than what they did five years ago.

At the same time, CEO pay for the Low-Wage 20 averaged around $18.6 million per year — close to the total average that all CEOs within the S&P 500 receive annually, which is $18.9 million per year.

“When corporations can get away with shifting their employees’ basic living costs onto taxpayers, this is a form of corporate welfare,” said report author Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS. “With the federal government slashing spending on anti-poverty programs, it’s even more important that major corporations in the world’s richest country pay their employees a living wage.”

The report also showed that, even when companies provide their employees with healthcare options, many workers can’t afford them.

“Even if Walmart employees do qualify for employer-based insurance, the costs are still high,” the IPS report stated. “The cheapest Walmart-sponsored plan for a single nonsmoker works out to $995 per year. For a family, the cheapest option comes to $5,900, the equivalent of 20 percent of Walmart’s median pay in 2024. Recent analysis of 19 states found that average spending on premiums and deductibles for employer-based family coverage averaged 10 percent of state median income.”

The report also notes that Low-Wage 20 CEOs have spent $260 billion in stock buybacks between the years 2019 and 2024. The money spent to put more cash in their own pockets could have greatly benefited their workforces, the IPS report found.

“With the $32.5 billion these firms spent on buybacks in 2024 alone, they could’ve lifted more than 1 million workers making the Low-Wage 20 average median of $29,087 up to the $59,600 income level needed to afford the U.S. average rent for a two-bedroom apartment,” the report stated.

Sixteen U.S. billionaires are also mentioned within the report, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Starbucks’s Howard Schultz, Home Depot’s Arthur Blank, and several Walton family members who are current owners or heirs to the Walmart fortune. These individuals “owe their wealth directly to companies in the Low-Wage 20,” the report said. “These former or current executives and dynastic heirs have accumulated gargantuan personal fortunes on the backs of workers who often have to rely on public assistance to get by.”

CEO pay over the past 50 years has indeed skyrocketed, while pay given to working class Americans has largely stagnated. Indeed, in 1976, CEO pay was about 20.5 times as much as average worker pay was, on average, in the U.S. In 2024, it was 280.7 times higher than what workers earned.

The report also warns that huge cuts in funding for both Medicaid and SNAP that were included in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act will make workers’ situation worse.

The report concludes by suggesting a number of possible solutions to the problem of corporate welfare these Low-Wage 20 companies, and other similar companies, could be reined in, including raising the minimum wages for workers across the board; strengthening labor rights protections; raising taxes on corporations whose CEO-worker pay gaps are extraordinary; taxing and restricting stock buybacks; and adopting “bad business fees” for corporations that rely on corporate welfare to subsidize their low-wage business models.

“Solving the current ‘affordability crisis’ will require safety net repairs and better ways to control basic costs,” the IPS report said. “But to fix this problem for the long-term, we need to put an end to the poverty wage business model that is all too prevalent in Corporate America.”