Big businesses, such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds, get a bad wrap for providing low-wage jobs. But, Americans may be surprised to know that they're funding a low-wage labor pool larger than both of these companies combined do, a new report by Demos, a public policy organization, shows.

The report, titled "Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars Are Fueling Low Wage Work and Fueling Inequality," finds that nearly 2 million private sector employees are working on America's behalf but earning $12 per hour or less. The report's authors, Amy Traub and Robert Hiltonsmith, deem these wages "too low to raise a family."

Every day, Americans see their tax dollars at work but many of the people doing the work are not only poorly paid, but they also have little or no benefits. Worse, many have limited opportunity to even make their way into the middle class, claim the researchers, and many of the workers that keep this nation running barely earn enough to afford essentials like food, health care, utilities and rent.

Editor's Note: How You Lost $85,000 During the Last Decade. See the Numbers.

In 2011, over $552 billion in federal funding supported about 3.7 million jobs at private sector hospitals, nursing and elder care facilities and home health care companies. But, an estimated 1.2 million of these jobs were low-wage positions, such as medical assistants and home health aides.

"When our tax dollars are used to underwrite bad jobs, the economy as a whole is weakened and all of us are negatively affected," the authors state.

Of course there are those who would argue that though it may be fair, boosting wages would only raise the tab for taxpayers.

According to The Washington Post, in 2008, researchers at Suffolk University calculated that mandating the government to pay competitive wages on construction projects raised the costs by approximately 10 percent.

However, the report's authors claim that in many cases raising wages is not likely to require any more taxpayer dollars. One reason, they reach this conclusion is because there appears to be a lot of money concentrated at the top.

Much ado has been made about the compensation of Wall Street executives as their workers are paid far less. But, the report found that U.S. taxpayers are funding a similar disparity.

Many working on behalf of America are "treated in a very un-American way," the authors claim.

"We know that growing inequality and these larger, dead-end jobs are a national problem. This is just a piece of that. But the key is, this is a piece that we're responsible for and really that we can do something about," Traub tells The Post.

Editor's Note: How You Lost $85,000 During the Last Decade. See the Numbers.