Good Jobs First

Taxpayers spend about $2 billion annually on Medicaid for Amazon and Walmart employees American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

"A 2024 state audit estimated Dominion may spend $16 billion to $18 billion by 2040 on transmission tied to data centers. Under the current setup, residential customers would cover 55% of that total, compared with 26% for data centers."

The tax breaks Rio Rancho, New Mexico, gave Intel could have allowed the school district to pay for a brand-new high school stocked with new computers for every student.

And the school district isn’t the only entity losing out on tax revenue. Intel has benefited from millions of dollars in other local, state, and federal subsidies. That includes $500 million Intel got in federal tax breaks in 2024 to expand the Rio Rancho campus again – even though the company laid off more than 200 workers at the site the previous year.

Meta approached Louisiana wanting massive tax breaks for its data center but that's not all it wanted: It also demanded secrecy to get around public opposition and it needed the deal done fast. As it crafted the deal, Meta also ensured the risk was borne by taxpayers, investors and the energy company (so residents again). The result is one of the biggest subsidies ever awarded to a private company. Louisianans could give Meta up to $10 billion over the life of the deal, along with several square miles of public land.
Unfortunately, this is how economic development is too often done - rushed, in secrecy and without short- and long-term protections and benefits for residents and workers.
We're gifting you the article, link is in the comments.

🎯 Companies receiving public subsidies pay workers so poorly they qualify for Medicaid and SNAP, and that includes many full-time workers. 🎯
A new Government Accountability Office report confirms a defining feature of the low-wage economy: Millions of people work—many full time and for some of the nation’s largest corporations—yet still rely on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called food stamps) to get by.

At Good Jobs First, we call this the hidden taxpayer cost of poorly regulated economic development subsidies: many of those same corporations have also received enormous tax abatements, grants, tax credits, and other job-creation subsidies.

Taxpayers are paying twice: first to subsidize the company (but failing to require wages and benefits that enable working families to be independent), and again to help its workers survive.

GAO estimates that in 2024, 13.8 million working-age adults enrolled in Medicaid had earnings from work, while 10.6 million working-age adults living in SNAP-recipient households had earnings with about two-thirds working full time, and roughly 88% working in the private sector.

These findings rebut the familiar blame-the-poor claim that Medicaid and SNAP are disconnected from work. In reality, both programs are essential supports for millions of workers in industries where employers fail to provide adequate wages, stable hours, or affordable health coverage.

More than one-third of these workers were employed by companies with over 1,000 employees.

Friday roundup: On being a fan of the World Cup without being a fan of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Before we start with this week's roundup, a note about the World Cup: I'm enjoying it! The one-game knockout format, even in its dumb expanded iteration, is great for generating drama, and when you mix in international politics and colonial history, you get even more opportunities for hilarity. But....

"Major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup are invariably sold as an economic jackpot. Cities compete fiercely for hosting rights, hotel developers expand capacity and local politicians promise booming tourism, packed restaurants and millions in new spending. Yet recent reports that local governments and agencies in Washington, a host state, expect to spend $24 million more to host the games than they will see in boosted tax revenue reveal a familiar pattern: The economics of mega events rarely match the hype.

This does not surprise economists. For decades, independent research on mega sporting events has shown that the projected economic windfalls are routinely overstated. Whether it is the Olympics, the Super Bowl or the World Cup, boosters tend to assume that millions of dollars in visitor spending represent entirely new economic activity. In reality, much of the spending is simply redistributed from one sector to another. What one FIFA tourist would have spent on other elective purchases they now spend on attending the World Cup.

The World Cup may still deliver plenty of memorable moments on the pitch. But off the field, cities must learn that prestige and economic return are not the same thing."
Same is true of one-off events like Super Bowls and stadiums/arenas in general.

The World Cup Is an Economic Bonanza? Think Again. For a city, hosting a mega sporting event might be worth it for prestige, local pride and global visibility. But it rarely pays off, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

Good union jobs and public accountability shouldn't be an either/or.

In a new interview, Good Jobs First's Anthony Elmo talks to IBEW Local 24's Rico Albacarys about data center construction jobs, tax subsidies, and what developers should guarantee in return for public dollars.

Q: You’ve pushed back on the idea that data center construction creates only “thin” jobs. From your perspective, what are critics missing about how construction workers build long-term careers from project-based work?

A: Anyone working in construction understands that we work on “temporary projects” because we quite literally work ourselves out of a job. The goal is always to build as safely and efficiently as possible and move on to the next project. Large-scale infrastructure projects provide longer timelines within that reality. For example, a data center campus in Frederick County has a roughly 15-year work outlook across phases. That is not a short-term employment impact in any meaningful sense.

We hear the same framing with clean energy projects like offshore wind and solar. To characterize construction jobs as “thin” minimizes the economic impact of construction workers. Union tradespeople build 30–40 year-careers by moving from project to project, with family sustaining wages, healthcare, and retirement benefits. Careers are sustained through a pipeline of projects, not permanence at any one site.
Continue reading the full interview:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has historically enforced discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race and gender. But under the Trump Administration, it has shifted to a focus on enforcing anti-DEI practices and "anti-Christian bias."

A New Era at the EEOC: Who's Protected? - Good Jobs First Enforcement at the EEOC has shifted from a focus on race and gender discrimination to anti-DEI practices and religious discrimination.

The fiscal outlook for data center tax breaks just got a lot cloudier.
New disclosures show states are losing billions more than previously estimated; 14 states still fail to report the cost of their data center tax exemptions at all.
Consider:
📈 Georgia raised its FY 2026 estimate to $2.5 billion.
📈 Texas projects $9 billion in losses over five years.
📈 Virginia's annual cost has reached nearly $2 billion.
📈 Ohio disclosed $1.6 billion in losses in 2025 and then paused new subsidy applications.
When costs keep soaring and transparency is still missing, it's time for states to hit pause. Taxpayers deserve to know what these deals really cost before even more public revenue disappears into the cloud.
Read our new report:
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