How many full-time Walmart employees qualify for SNAP benefits nationwide?

1. What the data say — partial snapshots, not a national total

Federal SNAP datasets do not list employers, so researchers and advocates rely on state agency responses and selective studies; for example, a 2020 report compiling state replies found ~14,500 Walmart employees on SNAP across nine responding states ^[1]. That figure is explicitly limited to those nine states and to the time and methods of that survey; none of the provided reporting gives a contemporaneous nationwide, employer‑level count of full‑time Walmart workers who qualify for SNAP ^{[2] [3]}.

2. Why getting a national number is hard — limits of public data

National SNAP enrollment and benefit totals exist, but they do not identify employers, so you cannot derive employer‑level counts from federal SNAP tables (available sources do not mention a federal employer dataset). Studies that do report employer counts use state‑by‑state disclosure or special data requests; the 2020 review cited by Senator Sanders and then‑media coverage used nine states’ responses to estimate employer shares, a method that cannot be extrapolated to a precise national total without strong assumptions ^[1].

3. What researchers and advocates have found and argued

Advocacy and investigative pieces point to Walmart repeatedly appearing among the top employers of SNAP recipients in state lists — fueling arguments that large retailers benefit indirectly from low wages supplemented by public assistance ^{[2] [3]}. Those accounts also report that in the nine‑state sample Walmart had large numbers of employees on SNAP and Medicaid, a result used to criticize employer pay practices ^{[1] [2]}.

4. Corporate exposure and SNAP’s retail footprint

Retail analyses show Walmart captures a large share of SNAP spending — Numerator estimated Walmart captured roughly 18–24% of SNAP shopper spending in recent reports cited by media ^{[4] [5]}. That spending share is not the same as an employer headcount on SNAP, but it explains why SNAP pauses or disruptions markedly affect Walmart’s checkout volumes and why journalists and analysts closely watch links between SNAP recipients and big‑box retailers ^{[4] [5]}.

5. Recent events that spotlight the question but don’t answer it

Reporting around the 2025 government shutdown emphasized SNAP pauses’ impact on retailers and employees: outlets documented dips in Walmart volume during weeks when SNAP benefits were halted and widespread social media claims about store closures ^{[6] [7]}. Walmart publicly denied plans to close stores over SNAP disruptions, and mainstream fact checks treated viral closure claims as false; none of that coverage supplied a national count of full‑time Walmart employees on SNAP ^{[7] [8]}.

6. Competing perspectives and implicit agendas

Advocates and some researchers use employer‑level SNAP counts to argue that low wages at large corporations shift costs to taxpayers ^{[2] [3]}. Corporate and retail coverage instead emphasizes customer spending patterns and operational impacts when SNAP payments lapse, framing the issue as a market/revenue concern rather than primarily a labor‑policy critique ^{[4] [5] [6]}. Each perspective relies on partial data: advocates on state‑level employer lists, retailers and market analysts on SNAP spending shares — neither yields a definitive nationwide employee count ^{[1] [4]}.

7. What would be needed to answer your question precisely

A precise national count of full‑time Walmart employees who qualify for SNAP would require either (a) state SNAP agencies to release employer‑linked enrollment counts for all states and for current periods, or (b) Walmart to disclose how many of its full‑time U.S. employees participate in SNAP. Neither source is present in the available reporting; current public studies offer only partial, state‑limited snapshots like the nine‑state figure of ~14,500 ^[1]. Available sources do not mention a complete national total.

8. Bottom line for readers

There is evidence Walmart employs substantial numbers of workers who use SNAP in sampled states and that Walmart captures a large share of SNAP spending — factors that make the company central to debates about wages and public assistance ^{[1] [4]}. But a reliable, up‑to‑date nationwide count of full‑time Walmart employees who qualify for SNAP is not present in the available sources and cannot be stated from the cited material ^{[2] [3]}.