As states enact stricter work requirements for the federal food stamp program, a new analysis suggests those requirements won’t enhance employment and will push more people off of food assistance. 

The researchers conducted a review of studies on work requirements and concluded that “the best evidence shows they do not increase employment. Moreover, this research finds work requirements cause a large decrease in participation in SNAP.”

The research from The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, comes at a time of major upheaval for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Participation is already declining as states implement changes mandated by the president’s major tax and domestic policy law enacted last summer. 

Since the fall, states and counties that administer SNAP have been notifying residents who rely on food stamps that they must meet work requirements or lose their food assistance. Those changes affected exemptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, among others. 

Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law mandated cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

While SNAP enrollment is declining nationally, more people will likely lose food assistance as states continue to implement the work requirements and recertify participants, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution and the associate director of The Hamilton Project. 

“Everything that we know about work requirements is that they do not increase employment among the groups that are subject to them,” she told Stateline. “All they do is make it more likely that they are disenrolled from the program. And so, should these work requirements continue to be rolled out and implemented, we would expect to see declining enrollment and no changes in employment.”

Bauer said the growing body of research on SNAP has changed her mind about its ability to affect employment. While food stamps reach millions of people each year, the program’s work requirements have proven ineffective, confusing and burdensome, she said. 

“I am now of the mind that SNAP should be an anti-hunger program, and there are many, many ways to do workforce development, career ladders, career training, job search — all of those things. That’s not an anti hunger program and it shouldn’t be associated with it.”

What’s more concerning to her is how the stricter work requirements will affect people who lose jobs in an economic downturn. Traditionally, SNAP has been one of the most effective social supports for the unemployed, helping people who lose their jobs quickly gain food assistance. But laid-off workers will increasingly be told they cannot receive benefits without working. 

“It’s just this dissonant, unhelpful interaction that you have with the government,” Bauer said. “I lost my job, I need food benefits. Well, you can only get food benefits if you have a job.”

At least 2.5 million low-income people, or 6% of those enrolled, have lost SNAP benefits since the legislation was signed into law, according to a study by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published Wednesday.

Bauer said it’s unclear how much of that decline is directly related to the federal legislation. That’s because SNAP participation generally declines during times of economic prosperity and increases during downturns.

But the program is facing unprecedented changes: Under the new law, states have also lost funding for nutrition education programs, must end eligibility for noncitizens such as refugees and asylees, and will lose work requirement waivers for those living in areas with limited employment opportunities. States are also forced to cover more of the costs of the program. 

Earlier this week, a USDA spokesperson applauded the drop in SNAP participation, noting the program’s rolls had fallen below 40 million for the first time since the pandemic. The spokesperson told States Newsroom the program would continue “to serve those with the greatest need while also strengthening program integrity.”

Republicans, including  U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have defended the legislative changes to SNAP, arguing they will help eliminate waste and fraud in the program.

In a June news release, he characterized SNAP as a “bloated, inefficient program,” but said Americans who needed food assistance would still receive it.

“Republicans are proud to defend commonsense welfare reform, fiscal sanity, and the dignity of work,” Johnson said in the release.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

At least 2.5 million low-income people quickly lost help affording groceries under a Republican-passed law that added new requirements for the nation’s largest nutrition program and shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in costs from the federal government to states, according to a study the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published Wednesday.

Some 6% of the 41 million Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, when President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, 2025, were no longer receiving benefits by the end of the year. 

The left-leaning think tank’s report was based on U.S. Department of Agriculture and state agency data from July to December 2025. 

Arizona was the largest outlier in the data, with a whopping 47% of people in the program — about 424,000 Arizonans — losing benefits in 2025, according to the think tank, which cited more recent state agency data in addition to last year’s USDA numbers.

Full-year 2025 data from the USDA, which operates the federal side of SNAP, shows an even bigger drop of 3.4 million people, or roughly 8% of the program’s total, CBPP said. SNAP is federally funded and administered by states, though that cost-share will change under the law.

In a late Wednesday email, a USDA spokesperson applauded the drop in SNAP participation, noting the program’s rolls had fallen below 40 million for the first time since the pandemic. The spokesperson said the program would continue “to serve those with the greatest need while also strengthening program integrity.”

“This change reflects several factors, including the most comprehensive work requirement reform since 1996, the One Big Beautiful Bill of 2025, as well as USDA initiatives that expand access to employment services, career and technical education, and case‑management support through USDA’s More Than a Job campaign,” the spokesperson wrote.

Incentives for states

The study did not intend to find a cause for the decline, co-author Joseph Llobrera, CBPP’s senior director of research for food assistance, said in an interview. But he noted the law created incentives for states to limit participation in the program. 

Under a provision of the law that is not yet in force, the share of the program’s cost that states must shoulder is tied to the state’s “error rate” — payments a state makes that were either more or less than the beneficiary should have received.

That motivates states to restrict access to the program, without providing a corresponding reward for expanding access, Llobrera said.

“So the incentive structure that’s in place, it really pushes states to make it harder to get onto the program for people who need that assistance,” he said.

The drop in participation happened without improving economic conditions, such as a decline in the unemployment rate, the researchers said. 

That indicates people are moving off the rolls due to changes in the program, not because their circumstances have improved to the point they no longer need food assistance, the study said.

Many provisions of the law have not yet gone into effect. The error rate penalties, for example, start in fiscal year 2028.

Design, not a bug

In part, though, that restriction is by design, as the law’s supporters intended to cut SNAP benefits for recipients who met certain criteria and to control what they portrayed as fraud and waste at the state level. 

The cuts in the federal share of SNAP funding helped pay for massive tax cuts and a boost to military spending in other parts of the megabill, which Republicans passed without any Democratic support through a process known as budget reconciliation.

The proponents of the agriculture section of the megabill championed provisions to make beneficiaries report their eligibility more often, boost work requirements, disqualify certain categories of legal immigrants, raise the age of children at which parenting would cease to qualify as work and otherwise tighten the availability of the program.

The provisions would help ensure only those who truly needed the federal assistance would get it, advocates said. 

It would also create an incentive for states to control erroneous payments, which was not the case when the federal government took on the entire cost of the program before the bill’s enactment.

“It is a disservice to the truly needy to rely on SNAP,” House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said as the committee marked up the bill last year. “Clearly, SNAP is not working as Congress intended. We must ensure the proper incentives are in place for states to administer the program more effectively for those it serves.”

Llobrera said he understood members of both parties would engage in rhetoric about restrictions on SNAP, but that the center at the time was “raising the alarm that the bill was going to hurt people.”

A spokesperson for Thompson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Arizona

The CBPP report included a breakout section on Arizona, where the SNAP enrollment dropped much further than any other state.

As in other states, economic gains did not explain the changes in Arizona, the case study said.

“This dramatic drop cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food,” the report said, noting that Arizona’s unemployment rate rose over the period of the study, while the cost of groceries rose about 4% in 2025.

The state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, and state agency spokespeople have blamed the GOP law for the drastic reduction in benefits, the study said, but the decline goes beyond what would be expected based on the law’s provisions. 

That suggests that state administrators — even under Democratic leaders — are going beyond the minimum requirements of the law to restrict access, the authors said.

“Thus, it appears that a combination of factors, including the megabill and the state’s response to it, are contributing to the sharp decline in the number of Arizona families getting SNAP,” they wrote.

Because the law also raises the costs to states of administering the program, in addition to requiring states pay for some portion of benefits, some, including Arizona, cut staff ahead of the law’s enactment, Llobrera said. 

“With the cuts to the administrative funding for states due to that megabill, those are only just going to accelerate,” he said.

Shutdown

Such changes to SNAP rules added to an already tumultuous period for the program’s recipients. Over the course of a then-record-long partial government shutdown last year, benefits were constantly turned off and on as the Trump administration said it could not spend SNAP funds during a shutdown and federal courts held that benefits must be paid.

Spokespeople for the White House did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.

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Changes from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” are forcing states to expand work requirements for those who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. 

The law did not rewrite the core work requirements for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Instead, it changed who must meet them. In Wisconsin, the changes could put around 36,000 people at risk of losing their food assistance benefits. 

Policy consultant David Rubel said federal law allows a third option that could make assistance more accessible for those who are at risk of losing benefits.

Work requirements

The age range for adults required to meet work requirements will increase from 18-54 to 18-64. Parents of children age 14 and older will now also need to meet work requirements.

Federal law allows three primary ways for some adults without dependents to continue receiving FoodShare. 

The primary way is employment. People must work at least 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month to keep benefits. 

Another way is training or workforce programs. People can participate in state-approved job training programs for 20 hours a week and keep benefits. 

The third option, Rubel said, can require significantly fewer hours. 

Workfare allows people to work or volunteer in a state-approved program for a number of hours based on the value of that person’s SNAP benefits. 

According to federal law, the number of hours required is calculated by dividing a person’s monthly SNAP benefits by the state minimum wage. So, if someone in Wisconsin, where the minimum wage is $7.25, receives $180 in food stamps, they’d have to work or volunteer only about 25 hours monthly to continue receiving benefits. 

Rubel said SNAP recipients may not realize that option exists.

“If someone thinks they must volunteer 80 hours a month, they may assume they can’t comply,” he said. “But six hours a week is very different.”

Why you should know

While not directly promoted on the Wisconsin Department of Health Services website, Elizabeth Goodsitt, a DHS spokesperson, said workfare is available in Wisconsin under the FoodShare Employment and Training (FSET) program.

According to Goodsitt, once a FoodShare member chooses to participate in FSET, a case manager will discuss the situation and background to see if workfare is a good approach for that person. 

“Sites that accept FSET participants for workfare are set up by the FSET vendor and structured to offer members the chance to build their work experience, record and references,” she wrote in an email. “If a member does workfare, their case manager works with them to calculate the number of hours that will meet their work requirement, specifically, based on the amount of FoodShare they receive each month.” 

Wisconsin is one of four states, including Texas, Vermont and South Dakota, that signed a pledge committing to work opportunities for people at risk of losing SNAP benefits. 

Because enforcement has just resumed in many places, states are beginning to notify recipients through recertification letters. Recertification letters are routine notices SNAP participants receive every six months to confirm their eligibility.

But in many states, the public messaging around SNAP work requirements focuses primarily on the 80-hour employment threshold. 

“If people only hear about the 80 hours, they may assume they have no choice,” Rubel said. “People should have all the information so they can make an informed decision.”

SNAP work requirements have changed. Here is a look at options to keep benefits, including volunteering is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.