As Mississippians struggle to keep up with rising gas and food prices, a new report showed many of the nation’s biggest companies are paying wages so small their employees must enroll in safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid.

According to Payscale, a clerk in Mississippi makes between $9 and $14 an hour and sales associates make between $9 and $17 an hour.

Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the U.S. has a "poverty wage business model."

"Twenty of the largest and most profitable corporations in this country are not paying their workers enough to meet basic necessities," Anderson pointed out. "Many of them are having to rely on public assistance just to get by."

All companies listed in the report, “America’s 20 Largest Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis,” failed to pay workers enough to afford the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment, while the pay of the average CEO topped $18 million.

Amazon topped the list with a median income of just over $37,000 for workers. Anderson noted between 2019 and 2024, companies spent a combined $260 billion buying back their own stock, which can temporarily increase stock values for shareholders.

"If these companies had taken the money that they put into stock buybacks and put it into worker pay, they could have lifted a million workers up to the level that you would need to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment," Anderson explained.

Anderson added there are tools available to lawmakers to help workers, including raising the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Lawmakers can also strengthen workers’ rights to unionize and hold companies accountable for unfair labor practices.

Companies have been using all kinds of aggressive tactics to undercut the interest among their employees in forming unions so they can bargain collectively and get a fairer reward for the labor they put into the companies.

Source: Public News Service