SNAP (Food Stamp) Enrollment

The USDA Food and Nutrition Service publishes monthly SNAP enrollment data. The September 2019 reading, just before the pandemic, was 35.7 million. Enrollment surged through 2020 and 2021 and has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Several million additional Americans are using food assistance today than before the pandemic, and the rolls have stopped falling.

That persistence is the point. SNAP enrollment is means-tested. Eligibility depends on income relative to the federal poverty line. For enrollment to stay well above pre-pandemic levels five years later, the share of households below the income thresholds has to be structurally higher — either because wages have not kept up with costs, or because the cost of qualifying expenses like rent and child care has pushed more households across the eligibility line.

The official unemployment rate has been under 5% for most of this window. The headline economy is not in recession. And yet the number of households qualifying for grocery help keeps climbing.

SNAP is a leading indicator for the distress the American Distress Index tracks. It measures the share of households that have already run out of runway on food — the most elastic line in the household budget. The Buffer and The Safety Net measure the reserves that should prevent a household from needing SNAP in the first place. Both are near historic lows. The enrollment plateau is what that looks like on the ground.