About 500,000 adults will soon lose SNAP due to return of work-reporting requirements; Another 750,000 older adults newly at risk

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

An ineffective SNAP policy that takes food assistance away from people who can’t meet a work-reporting requirement will return this summer, after being paused during the public health emergency.

This will mean that people who are between jobs, who have health conditions or caregiving responsibilities that impede work at least temporarily, whose work hours fluctuate, or who face challenges navigating the red tape of the reporting and exemption systems will be at risk of losing the food assistance they need to buy groceries.

About 500,000 — and possibly closer to 1 million — of the nation’s lowest-income adults will be cut off SNAP beginning in October 2023, as the program’s work-reporting requirement returns after being temporarily suspended during the pandemic.

The long-standing work-reporting requirement limits benefits to three months in a 36-month period for adults aged 18-49 who aren’t disabled or raising minor children in the home unless they report work or training activities of at least 20 hours a week.

The requirement was suspended during the COVID-19 public health emergency, which ended on May 11. As a result, the work-reporting cut off will go back into effect this summer in most areas of the U.S., despite clear evidence that this requirement takes food assistance away from people who need it and doesn’t increase employment — the goal proponents of this requirement say they are seeking.

Individuals subject to the work-reporting requirement will lose their food assistance benefits after three months if they cannot document that they are working or engaged in a qualifying work program for 20 hours or more a week or secure an exemption. The impact will be felt in 43 states that must or are choosing to reimpose the work-reporting requirement in 2023.

Moreover, the recent debt ceiling agreement phases in an expansion of this work-reporting requirement to adults up to age 54. That will put an estimated 750,000 adults aged 50-54 at risk of losing food assistance because they are newly subject to this harsh and ineffective policy.

The provision goes into effect beginning September 1, 2023 for 50-year-olds, October 1 for 51- and 52-year-olds, and October 2024 for 53- and 54 year-olds.

The agreement also provides temporary exemptions from the time limit for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth up to age 24. States will need to identify these individuals for them to be exempt.

Put simply, taking food away from people doesn’t encourage work. Numerous studies in the decades since the work-reporting requirement for 18- to 49-year-olds took effect have shown that the policy doesn’t increase employment or earnings — it just cuts people off from the food assistance they need to buy groceries.