This data interactive accompanies “Proposed SNAP cuts would permanently undermine recession readiness and responsiveness” by Lauren Bauer and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. The interactive will be updated in the future with additional policy options and time periods.
Currently, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) between the ages of 18 and 54 have to meet work requirements to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. If they fail to do so for three months, they are not eligible to receive benefits until the end of a three-year period, which is why the work requirement is commonly called “the time limit.”
When there is evidence that local labor markets are struggling, states can apply for waivers to exempt ABAWDs living in those areas from the time limit. When a waiver is in place, ABAWDs unable to find work are not penalized for failing to meet the work requirement.
The bill that just passed the House proposes to expose additional SNAP participants to time limit work requirements. At the same time, this bill radically changes SNAP work requirement waiver criteria: States may only request waivers when a county or county-equivalent has an unemployment rate above 10 percent.
To understand how these changes impact the capacity of SNAP to function as a countercyclical program during economic contractions, we applied the proposed 10 percent unemployment rate cutoff to individual counties during the Great Recession. The interactive map shows how long after the start of the recession (December 2007) it took for each county in the U.S. to hit the 10 percent unemployment rate threshold by state.
This interactive allows users to zoom into this map to see how counties within each state would have fared under the recently proposed rules. For the selected state, users can hover over individual counties to see how long they remained below the threshold and their 2008 population. Below the map, the bar chart highlights the distribution of each state’s population among counties based on how long they remained below the threshold.
When the Great Recession started in December 2007, only 76 counties (where 3.0 million people live) were already at 10 percent unemployment. Within the first year, an additional 289 counties (14.9 million people) hit 10 percent unemployment. In years one and two, 2, 1,177 additional counties (131.2 million people); in years 2 to 3, an additional 319 counties (31.5 million people); in years 3 to 4, another 33 counties (1.4 million people). Between the fourth year and the end of the business cycle, 19 additional counties (0.9 million people) reached 10 percent unemployment. And 1,210 counties (116.8 million people) never reached 10 percent unemployment during the Great Recession.
About 40 percent of the population lived in a county where county-level unemployment did not reach 10 percent during the Great Recession.
What is the current work requirement waiver policy?
States may submit SNAP work requirement waiver requests to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These waiver requests identify places where the state has documented evidence of a weak labor market as well as the evidence supporting this designation. Under current law a state must be able to provide evidence that the area:
- has a recent 12-month average unemployment rate over 10 percent;
- has a recent three-month average unemployment rate over 10 percent;
- has a historical seasonal unemployment rate over 10 percent;
- is designated by the U.S. Department of Labor as a Labor Surplus Area (LSA);
- qualifies for Extended Benefits to Unemployment Insurance (EB);
- has a low and declining employment-to-population ratio;
- has a lack of jobs in declining occupations or industries;
- is described in a study or other publication as an area where there is a lack of jobs; or
- has a 24-month average unemployment rate of 20 percent above the national average for the same period, starting no earlier than the start of the LSA designation period for the current fiscal year.
States may request waivers for the entire state, entities such as cities, towns, counties, Indian Reservations, or Labor Surplus Areas, or state-defined contiguous labor market areas. If approved, these waivers exempt all ABAWDs in that area from time limit work requirement-related rules and penalties.
What policy changes are being proposed related to SNAP work requirement waivers?
The bill that passed the House in May makes the following changes to SNAP work requirement waiver policy:
- The only areas eligible for a waiver are individual counties and county equivalents as defined by Census.
- The only metric of a weak labor market is an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher at the county or county-equivalent geography.
- States are limited to monthly individual hardship exemptions equal to 1 percent of the caseload subject to the time limit work requirement, down from 8 percent.
- States may only apply for waivers that last 12 consecutive months.
For more research on SNAP work requirement waivers, please see:
- A primer on SNAP work requirements
- How do work requirement waivers help SNAP respond to a recession?
- Who stands to lose if the final SNAP work requirement rule takes effect?
