How many SNAP recipients are employed by Walmart specifically in 2022–2024?

1. Why the clean answer is missing — data gaps and the GAO snapshot that people cite

Public records and the analytic notes show a clear data gap for company-level counts of employees on SNAP for 2022–2024. The most concrete empirical number in the material is from a GAO-style study reported around 2020 showing 14,500 Walmart employees on SNAP in nine states, plus another 10,350 on Medicaid in that sample; this remains the closest thing to a headcount but covers a limited geography and an earlier year, so it cannot be used as a definitive 2022–2024 figure ^{[1] [2]}. Advocacy organizations and news outlets continue to cite those earlier findings when discussing employer reliance on public benefits, but the analyses provided make clear that no comparable, comprehensive follow-up number for 2022–2024 appears in the documents reviewed ^{[5] [6]}.

2. What circumstantial evidence tells us about Walmart’s relationship to SNAP spending

While an employee headcount is missing, multiple sources document Walmart’s outsized role as a retailer for SNAP consumers, which creates plausible reasons many Walmart employees could also be SNAP participants: reports show Walmart captures between roughly 18% and 24% of all SNAP grocery spending, and surveys note extremely high SNAP shopper penetration at Walmart, with over 94% of SNAP shoppers buying food there in the past year in one study ^{[3] [4]}. Those retail-market measures confirm Walmart is central to the SNAP ecosystem, but they are consumer-spend statistics, not employee-beneficiary counts, and the distinction matters for policy and accountability debates ^{[4] [3]}.

3. Why advocacy claims and corporate statements can point in different directions

Analyses in the record show two recurring narratives: advocates and some commentators emphasize that large employers like Walmart have many workers relying on SNAP and Medicaid, using earlier GAO-type counts to argue for policy fixes; corporate-facing outlets and fact checks push back by noting that there is no recent, company-wide employee SNAP tally available publicly and that SNAP usage among shoppers is not the same as SNAP usage among employees ^{[7] [5]}. Both angles rely on legitimate data points—advocates on the GAO snapshot and retailers on contemporary spending patterns—but the documents reviewed underline that neither side has produced a current, comprehensive employee-level estimate for 2022–2024 ^{[8] [5]}.

4. What a robust answer would require and why existing figures fall short

A reliable 2022–2024 count would require either Walmart to disclose employee participation in SNAP for those years or a government agency to produce a company-level estimate using tax, employment and SNAP enrollment crosswalks—neither of which appears in the reviewed materials. The 2020 estimate covered only nine states and lacked a full-time/part-time breakdown; subsequent retail SNAP-spend studies illuminate consumer behavior but do not connect that behavior to Walmart employees’ benefit status, so they cannot substitute for a headcount ^{[1] [4]}. The documents make clear that using retail SNAP-share percentages to infer employee counts would be methodologically unsound.

5. Bottom line and what to watch next

The bottom line is straightforward: no verified, company-wide figure for how many Walmart employees received SNAP in 2022–2024 exists in the materials provided; the nearest concrete benchmark is the 2020 nine-state GAO-style count of about 14,500 Walmart employees on SNAP, which is not a valid substitute for a national 2022–2024 estimate ^{[1] [2]}. For anyone seeking an updated number, the next steps are to press Walmart for voluntary disclosure, to request updated GAO or state-level cross-tabulations, or to watch for peer-reviewed or government analyses that specifically target employer-level SNAP participation for 2022–2024 ^{[3] [6]}.