The platform economy has always preferred to tell its own narrative. Adaptable work. additional revenue. Take charge of your own life. Decide on your own schedule. For a while, everyone benefited from this story because it was neither wholly false nor simple to methodically refute. That is more difficult to sustain, according to a GAO assessment released in late July 2026.
The number of gig economy workers who depend on federal poverty programs has increased dramatically since 2020, according to statistics analyzed by the Government Accountability Office from 11 states, which account for about a fifth of all Americans. In 2024, there were around 14 million working adults enrolled in Medicaid. A further 10.6 million adults, up from 9 million four years prior, were in families that received SNAP food benefits. 71.3 percent of those SNAP users had full-time jobs. Since they were unemployed, they were not receiving food stamps. Because their jobs didn’t pay well, they were receiving food stamps.
Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub, and Instacart collectively had eclipsed Walmart as the employer group with the most employees getting SNAP and Medicaid benefits across the states surveyed. This particular fact made the analysis especially hard to discount. Walmart has been at the center of this criticism for decades: the claim that a business making huge profits while its employees depend on government help is essentially receiving taxpayer subsidies. This criticism now applies—possibly more sharply—to a group of businesses that have spent years claiming their employees aren’t actually their employees at all.
There is a noticeable difference in financial performance. Uber’s revenue in 2024 was $43.9 billion, up 18% from the previous year, while its net income was $9.8 billion. The business declared the fourth quarter to be “strongest ever.” As of April 2025, its market value was roughly $169 billion. DoorDash reported revenue of $10.72 billion in 2024, a 24 percent increase over the previous year. The dynamic was succinctly described in a 155-page Human Rights Watch report published in May 2025 that covered Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber. It highlighted the stark contrast between the vast amount of capital these companies had amassed and the poverty and financial instability that many platform workers faced.
It is worthwhile to consider the algorithmic aspect of the pay issue, which has been recorded separately. In order to resolve New York State’s allegations that it had been using consumer tips to subsidize driver wages instead of giving tips on top of guaranteed pay—basically, tips were acting as a ceiling rather than a bonus—DoorDash paid close to $17 million. While researching the settlement, Andrew Wolf of Cornell University pointed out that even after enforcement actions, such arrangements are still made possible by the lack of openness surrounding how these algorithms function. Employees have no real insight into how their compensation is determined, how their tasks are assigned, or what behaviors the algorithm is rewarding or punishing. The output is given to them. The formula is not visible to them.
In terms of specific facts, the industry’s reaction to all of this has been consistent and not wholly incorrect. Eighty percent of the drivers employed by app-based gig companies perform part-time jobs to augment their income, according to the Flex Association. DoorDash noted that in 2025, the average delivery driver worked just four hours per week, with 63% of them doing so to make up for fewer hours spent elsewhere. Most likely, both claims are true. Additionally, they are not very comforting because they depict a sizable community of individuals who are underemployed in other occupations, using gig platforms to make up the difference, and still falling short of being eligible for government poverty aid.
