The number of gig workers relying on federal assistance programs for the poor while driving for ride-sharing and delivery services has soared, the Government Accountability Office found in a report published Wednesday.
The federal auditing agency estimated that the number of Amazon employees enrolled in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program nearly tripled from February 2020 to September 2025 in 11 states that reported their numbers.
It also found that Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub and Instacart collectively replaced Walmart – the nation’s biggest employer – as the company with the most recipients of SNAP food subsidies.
Amazon, the nation’s second-largest employer, passed McDonald’s and moved into second place behind Walmart on the Medicaid list.
“American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the starvation wages of large corporations like Walmart and Amazon,” Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent who requested the report, said in a statement. “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.”
The report included Medicaid employer data from six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Rhode Island.
Its SNAP employer data came from nine states: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.
Only four of the states — Georgia, Indiana, Maine and Massachusetts — reported data for both programs.
The report estimated that 13.8 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid in 2024, up from 12 million in 2020, and 66.1% of them worked full-time.
Another 10.6 million adults relied on SNAP to buy groceries in 2024, up from 9 million in 2020, and 71.3% of them worked full-time.
The Flex Association, a trade group representing app-based gig companies, emphasized in an emailed statement that 80% of their drivers work part-time to supplement other jobs.
“App-based workers are independent contractors who choose when and how they work,” said Flex CEO Kristin Sharp.
She added: “The fact that people who qualify for public assistance choose flexible work to earn more money is a benefit of this model and why many people turn to it in the first place.”
A DoorDash spokesperson noted that its average delivery driver worked just four hours a week last year, and 63% did so to make up for reduced hours or income at another part-time or full-time job.
“For people who still need to make ends meet, dashing can actually help them stay off government assistance,” the spokesperson said in an email. “One-third of Dashers say that dashing helped them avoid needing to apply for benefits like unemployment insurance or SNAP/EBT in the first place, which is the opposite of the narrative this report suggests.”
Amazon officials noted that 74% of the retail giant’s employees are enrolled in a company health insurance plan – well above the 65% rate for full-time private-sector employees nationally – and cited the company’s substantial growth since 2020 for driving up raw Medicaid numbers.
“The conclusions drawn from this report are wrong and based on either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the facts,” said Rachael Lighty, an Amazon spokeswoman. “Amazon is one of the largest job creators in the country, so looking at raw numbers instead of percentages is misleading.”
She pointed out that eligibility for SNAP and Medicaid is based on total household income and family size, not individual wages or benefits.
At the end of last year, Amazon announced a $1 billion investment to raise pay and lower health-care costs for its fulfillment and transportation employees, increasing the average hourly base wage to more than $23 and bringing average total compensation with benefits to $30 per hour.
An Oxford Economics study published last October found that within five years of a fulfillment center opening, the surrounding area saw roughly 6,000 fewer Medicaid-enrolled residents as employment increased.
Meanwhile, a KFF analysis found that Medicaid enrollment was roughly 10% higher in February 2025 than February 2020.
“The issue is less about unemployment than about low productivity and low wages concentrated in specific sectors,” said Peter Earle, senior director of research at the free-market American Institute for Economic Research.
Mr. Earle said more than 7 in 10 recipients of Medicaid and SNAP work in five low-paying industries: retail, restaurants, hospitality, healthcare support and related services.
He added that more than one-third of working Medicaid recipients, and over 40% of working SNAP beneficiaries, come from companies with at least 1,000 employees, including many Fortune 500 firms.
Meanwhile, gig work exploded during the pandemic as more Americans sought to offset soaring inflation.
A May 2023 working paper published by the University of Chicago found that the number of gig workers jumped from 1.8 million in 2019 to 4.9 million in 2021, a 170% increase.
“Those are mostly temporary employees who do the work piecemeal when they need to rather than full-time as a career,” said Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“In other words, they’re people on Medicaid who earn extra bucks by ride-sharing or doing deliveries when they can,” he said. “It makes sense that they would enroll in Medicaid because that program was made for people like them.”
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.