The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, takes an in-depth look at the battery of companies they call the “Low Wage 20”: 20 companies that currently employ 6.7 million people across the United States. The names are familiar – Amazon, Starbucks, FedEx, Walmart and Tyson Foods are habitual wrongdoers – but their sins become more mortifying by the day.
The deadliest of these, according to the IPS, is how the “low-wage business models of these 20 companies have left many of their workers with no choice but to rely on public assistance.” Last year, the median salary at fifteen of the companies was “below the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid in most states”; for 13 of them, the salary was below the “threshold of $33,576 for a family of three to be eligible for SNAP.” It’s bad enough when your business model essentially calls for government programs to provide the money you’re not willing to pay. But like TNR’s Grace Segers has tirelessly reported more last yearFunding cuts and regulatory hurdles inherent in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” have pushed these programs, and their beneficiaries, into crisis.
The IPS says corporate power is driving the affordability crisis in other ways as well, including in a very fundamental way: They simply pay people less. “Half of 20 low-wage companies reported a decline in their median pay between 2019 and 2024, after adjusting for inflation,” the report said. “The group’s average median salary fell 4.6%, from $30,474 (in 2024 dollars) to $29,087. » These workers are also increasingly excluded from the American dream. Last year, the median salary reported by these 20 corporate criminals was less than the $59,600 needed to pay rent for a two-bedroom apartment; seven of the companies’ median salaries are lower than the $25,533 average price of a used car.
