SNAP Work Requirements Spark Debate Over Hunger, Employment, and Morality
On December 1, 2025, new SNAP work requirements took effect, mandating that non-disabled adults up to age 65 must prove they are working or actively seeking work for at least 80 hours per month to maintain their food stamp benefits. Certain groups, including homeless people, veterans, and former foster youth, are exempt from this rule. The Congressional Budget Office projects that 2.7 million people will lose benefits as a result.
Critics argue that these work requirements are based on outdated assumptions that hunger motivates employment, labeling the policy as harmful. Historically, hunger has been used in the U.S. to compel labor, such as withholding food from Native peoples to force land sales, controlling freedpeople after emancipation, exploiting plantation and mining workers, and collaborating with employers to break strikes through welfare programs. Notably, Black farmworkers were excluded from New Deal benefits, illustrating long-standing racial inequities tied to hunger and labor.
Contemporary political discourse frequently connects hunger to moral judgments about welfare recipients. House Speaker Mike Johnson described work requirements as including a "moral component" within the federal budget discussions. However, evidence suggests that SNAP work requirements do not significantly increase employment, especially since jobs are not always available and the administrative burden of documenting 80 hours monthly is considerable. The Urban Institute reported that even prior to these new rules, about one in eight SNAP recipients lost benefits due to paperwork challenges.
Many SNAP recipients are already employed; in 2015, over half of adult non-disabled recipients worked, and approximately 90% had a household member who worked within two years before or after receiving benefits. Additionally, earnings in households receiving SNAP have risen since the 1990s.
Hunger itself is influenced by a complex interplay of biological and political factors. Recent developments in medicine, such as GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, demonstrate that hunger can be medically managed and is not solely a matter of individual motivation. The continued reliance on SNAP is substantial, with about 42 million Americans dependent on the program during the recent November government shutdown, underscoring the vulnerability of households to potential benefit disruptions.
