Some 6 million to 7 million people have joined the food stamp program since the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic recession hit the United States last spring, a growth rate for SNAP never seen before, said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The think tank said enrollment exceeds 43 million people and is the highest since October 2017.
“This rise is unprecedented,” said the Center on Budget in a fact sheet released Tuesday. During the Great Recession, it took 17 months to add that many people to SNAP rolls. “While SNAP participation in most states is still substantially lower than during the peak months after the Great Recession, the increase so far due to Covid-19 has been rapid.”
Before the pandemic, 36.9 million people received food stamps. The addition of 6 million to 7 million participants since then represents an enrollment increase of 17 percent. At current levels, one of every eight Americans relies on SNAP to help buy food each month. Benefits average $182 per person, per month.
Participation is likely to tick up this fall, following the expiration of temporary federal unemployment benefits of $600 a week, said Stacy Dean, the think tank’s vice president for food assistance policy. At present, enrollment could be as high as 43.8 million, based on state-reported data through mid-August.
The USDA has not issued a nationwide SNAP total since July 20, when it pegged participation in April at a preliminary 43 million. Since then, it has cast doubt on the April figure, and said that in recent months, states have incorrectly mixed participants in the so-called P-EBT program with SNAP recipients.
“Therefore, reliable program data are not available at this time,” said Pam Miller, head of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, in a statement. “FNS is actively working with states to address these issues and will make the data available as soon we can be confident of their accuracy and reliability.”
The Center on Budget said its estimates kept SNAP and P-EBT totals separate. Formally named the Pandemic EBT, the P-EBT program helps low-income parents buy food for children who miss free or reduced-price school meals due to coronavirus closures. Some households received P-EBT benefits on their SNAP cards.
“Data from several sources show a dramatic increase in the number of households struggling to put enough food on the table,” said the Center on Budget fact sheet. “Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report that their household did not get enough to eat.” The unemployment rate among Blacks and Latinos was also well above the jobless rate for whites. “The majority of jobs lost in the crisis have been in industries that pay low average wages, with the lowest-paying industries accounting for 30 percent of all jobs but 51 percent of the jobs lost from February to August,” it said, citing Labor Department statistics.
The Trump administration has proposed three regulations that would narrow SNAP eligibility and reduce enrollment by 9 percent. Congress has blocked implementation of the rules during the pandemic.
The record for annual SNAP enrollment, reached in fiscal 2013, is 47.6 million people at a cost of $80 billion.