The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, takes a deep dive into the battery of corporations they call the “Low Wage 20”: 20 firms that currently employ 6.7 million people across the United States. The names are familiar—Amazon, Starbucks, FedEx, Walmart, and Tyson Foods are habitual malefactors—but their sins are growing more mortifying by the day.
The most mortal of these, per the IPS, is the way these 20 firms’ “low-wage business models have left many of their workers with no choice but to rely on public assistance.” Fifteen of the companies’ median pay last year was “below the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to be eligible for Medicaid in most states”; at 13 of them, the pay fell short of the “$33,576 threshold for a family of three to be eligible for SNAP.” It’s bad enough when your business model essentially plans for government programs to provide the money you’re not willing to pay. But as TNR’s Grace Segers has relentlessly reported over the past year, the funding cuts and regulatory hurdles embedded 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 a very basic one: They’re just paying people less. “Half of Low-Wage 20 firms reported a decline in their median pay between 2019 and 2024, after adjusting for inflation,” the report says. “Average median pay for the group dropped 4.6 percent, from $30,474 (in 2024 dollars) to $29,087.” These workers are increasingly getting priced out of the American dream too. All 20 of these corporate miscreants’ reported median pay last year was below the $59,600 needed to afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment; seven of the firms’ median salaries are lower than the $25,533 average price of a used car.
