Food stamp caseloads shrink as states roll out new work mandates
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesA year after the GOP’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act overhauled food stamp eligibility rules, enrollment is dropping by the millions.
Roughly 37 million people were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as of this past April compared with 42 million who received food stamps to use toward groceries last year, according to preliminary data from the Agriculture Department.
The expanded SNAP rules under the bill require certain adults to log 80 hours a month of work or volunteering, affecting groups previously exempt or partially covered. Work requirements now include veterans, homeless people, adults between 55 and 64, young adults aging out of foster care, and parents with a child between 14 and 17.
A decrease in SNAP recipients came after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law, dropping by the hundreds of thousands each month.
Participation held roughly steady in the months immediately after the law’s July 4, 2025, signing before beginning a sharper decline once more states started enforcing the new work rules that October.
Implementation is being phased in state by state rather than on a single national date.
So far, the average monthly decline is roughly 508,000 people, totaling a 5 million drop since June 2025. That decrease has accelerated, with monthly drops in fiscal 2026 averaging closer to 680,000 people.
The Congressional Budget Office projected the law’s work-requirement provisions would reduce SNAP participation by roughly 2.4 million people in an average month over the 2025-34 period.
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So far, the observed decline sits below that long-run projection.
CBO’s figure is a 10-year average assuming the rules are fully phased in nationwide, while USDA’s data reflects a rollout still working its way through the states, several of which did not begin enforcement until this year.
The Agriculture Department told National Public Radio that participation for food benefits tends to fluctuate, as the drop is not representative of any one policy.
Separately, CBO estimated that a provision requiring states to help fund SNAP benefits based on their payment-error rates could cause 300,000 people in an average month to lose SNAP entirely over the 2025-34 period, as some states respond to the new cost burden by tightening eligibility or leaving the program.
Under the enacted law, states are required, for the first time, to help pay for SNAP benefits rather than have the federal government cover the full cost, with the amount tied to each state’s payment error rate.
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USDA’s most recent data put the national fiscal 2025 error rate at 10.62%, well above the prepandemic average of 6.6%, suggesting many states could face at least some cost-sharing obligation once the requirement takes effect.
On the money side, this benefit-cost-share provision is the second-largest source of SNAP savings in the bill — nearly $41 billion in federal savings from 2028-34, about $35 billion of which comes directly from states now paying part of the benefit cost.
The single largest source of savings in the enacted law is the work-requirement expansion for adults ages 18 to 64 receiving SNAP, scored by CBO at $68.6 billion over the same 10-year window.
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Mary McCue Bell
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