The post More SNAP Cuts Are Coming in October, on Top of the 5 Million Already Lost first appeared on Crafting Your Home.
Two blows to the country’s food aid program land within months of each other. Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fell from 42.2 million people in May 2025 to 36.6 million in May 2026, a drop of more than 13 percent in a single year, according to preliminary federal data reported by the Associated Press. Now a second change begins.
Starting October 1, states must absorb a far larger share of the program’s administrative costs, a shift written into the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025.
Nationally, about 39% of SNAP recipients are children, according to the National Education Policy Center, cited in reporting by K-12 Dive. The average recipient received 188 dollars in May 2026, per the same federal data. Both figures frame what is now at stake as the program absorbs its second major disruption inside a year.
The rolls emptied out faster than Washington predicted
The Congressional Budget Office projected in February that new SNAP work rules would push enrollment below 34 million by 2036, a decline spread across a decade.
By May 2026, enrollment had already fallen to roughly the level the CBO expected for 2030, four years ahead of schedule.
More than 5 million Americans lost SNAP benefits in the twelve months after the rules took effect.
One law change explains most of the drop
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law July 4, 2025, raised the age at which able-bodied adults without dependents must meet work requirements from 54 to 64.
It also lowered the age of the youngest child that exempts a parent from those requirements, from 18 to 14.
Adults covered by the rule generally must work, volunteer or train at least 20 hours a week to keep receiving benefits.
Some states have lost half their caseload
State figures show uneven pain. Arizona recorded the sharpest decline, with enrollment down more than 50%, a loss of over 400,000 people in a year.
Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada each saw declines topping 20%, and Florida’s rolls shrank by about 22 percent.
Alaska was the lone exception, with enrollment rising 8.2% between April 2025 and April 2026, according to USDA figures.
October 1 shifts the bill from Washington to the states
Beginning October 1, states will take on an additional 25 percentage points of SNAP’s administrative costs, raising their share from 50 percent to 75%, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates states collectively owe roughly $9 billion under the new formula, with nearly half facing bills of $ 100 million or more, depending on their payment error rates.
Unlike the fight over benefit checks during last year’s shutdown, this change is permanent and does not depend on any funding lapse.
Paperwork, not defiance, is pushing people off the rolls
Analysts and food bank workers describe the falloff as driven less by refusal to work than by administrative friction.
Tia Fields, who studies safety net policy at the advocacy group Invest in Louisiana, told The Hill that a lot of it is administrative paperwork.
In Michigan, where SNAP enrollment fell 8.2%, Katelyn Cardoso of the Greater Lansing Food Bank said the pace of the decline is outpacing expectations, according to WILX.
Arizona’s rollout of new verification requirements produced a surge in call volume that overwhelmed state caseworkers, TheGrio reported.
Related Post: 5 States With the Most People on Food Stamps.
A funding cliff sits behind the cost shift
The administrative cost change is separate from a second deadline facing the program.
SNAP and WIC are funded through September 30, 2026, under a full-year appropriation Congress passed to end a 43-day shutdown last fall, the longest in modern history.
The House passed a stopgap bill, H.R. 9770, on July 21 that would extend government funding through December 4. The Senate advanced a competing version on an 89-to-4 cloture vote that would extend funding through December 11. Neither chamber had reconciled the two bills as of mid-September.
A separate WIC proposal would shrink grocery help further
A distinct legislative proposal would cut the Cash Value Benefit that WIC loads onto cards for fruit and vegetable purchases, from 52 dollars to 13 dollars a month for breastfeeding mothers and from 26 dollars to 10 dollars for young children.
The National WIC Association and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimate the change would affect roughly 5.4 million participants nationwide. The proposal has not been enacted and sits apart from the stopgap funding fight, according to Saving to Invest.
What happens next
National and state food assistance groups are asking Congress to delay the October cost shift while lawmakers negotiate the broader funding fight.
Dottie Rosenbaum, who directs federal SNAP policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told reporters that the enrollment decline traces to the same pressures converging at the start of the new fiscal year: tightened work rules, administrative strain, and the cost formula overhaul arriving in October.
For the roughly 36 million people still enrolled, the next several weeks will decide whether the fiscal year opens with continuity or with another disruption to a program that has already shed more people than the government first expected to lose over an entire decade.
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