Amazon’s profit has grown more than sixfold since 2020 — from $11.59 billion to $77.67 billion. Over that same stretch, the number of Amazon workers enrolled in SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid across 11 states nearly tripled. A new Government Accountability Office report, released July 22, 2026 and commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders, puts both facts in the same sentence. The GAO frames it that way. The data, however, is considerably more complicated.
The Numbers the GAO Found
The federal watchdog’s 11-state sample covers February 2020 through September 2025, representing roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population.
- 12,346 Amazon workers enrolled in SNAP; 11,338 in Medicaid — nearly triple the prior GAO count
- Amazon ranks second among traditional employers of assistance recipients, behind Walmart (15,515 on SNAP / 16,055 on Medicaid)
- Gig platforms — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart — now collectively surpass Walmart as the largest single SNAP category
- Nationally, 10.6 million working Americans are on SNAP and 13.8 million on Medicaid, both up since 2020 — a contrast to how companies like Meta are addressing workforce concerns through skilled trades investment
“Taxpayers continue to subsidize poverty wages.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, on the GAO findings
Context that matters: Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows real average hourly earnings — adjusted for inflation — moved from $11.18 in June 2024 to $11.32 in June 2026. That’s not a wage crisis unique to Amazon. It’s the whole labor market, running in place on a treadmill set just slightly too fast. The GAO establishes that worker dependency on public assistance accelerated during years when Amazon’s earnings and capital ambitions were expanding at record pace — correlation in timing, not a direct causal claim.
The $200 Billion Bet on AWS
CEO Andy Jassy’s February 2026 capex announcement rattled Wall Street and signaled just how all-in Amazon is on AI infrastructure.
On February 5, 2026, Jassy told investors the company would spend $200 billion in capital expenditures — money for building infrastructure — during 2026. That’s a roughly 60% jump from 2025. Jassy was explicit about where it’s going: “predominantly in AWS,” Amazon’s cloud division, to meet AI compute demand.
The AWS numbers back the ambition. Q1 2026 revenue hit $37.59 billion, up 28% year over year — the fastest segment growth in about 15 quarters. Q1 capex alone reached $44.2 billion. Prediction market traders on Polymarket put roughly 0.89 probability on the total exceeding $200 billion.
“Monetizing capacity as fast as we can install it.” — Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Q4 2025 earnings call, February 5, 2026
Amazon’s stock dropped after-hours when Jassy announced the figure. Wall Street gets nervous when ambition outpaces free cash flow, even temporarily. Q2 2026 earnings land July 30.
The genuine tension here isn’t villain-and-victim. It’s structural. The same company building the backbone of the AI economy — data centers, custom chips, satellite networks — runs on a workforce that needs government health insurance to get by.
Those aren’t contradictions that cancel each other out. They compound.
