President Donald Trump has recently turned to a new economic indicator in his push to convince Americans that his policies are boosting the economy: the number of people receiving federal food benefits.
“In nine months, we’ve lifted over 600,000 Americans off food stamps,” he said Tuesday at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington.
A few days earlier, Trump cited the figure at the McDonald’s Impact Summit, saying, “It’s really because we really have a strong economy.” And last month, he also highlighted the number at a gathering of business executives in South Korea.
But a deeper dive into the data paints a more complex picture. Even though fewer people are receiving federal food assistance, lower-wage workers continue to face a slowing job market and persistent inflation cutting into their wage growth, researchers and economists said. At the same time, food banks say they have been seeing growing demand, suggesting a continued struggle among people to be able to put food on the table.
Data on the number of people receiving food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often referred to as food stamps, is available only through June, and figures from that month are still subject to revisions, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. But comparing the number of people receiving food assistance in January — when Trump came into office — to June shows a decline of 800,000 enrollees, or around 2%, which the White House attributed to his policies.
“President Trump’s proven economic formula of tax cuts, deregulation, and unleashing American energy has cooled inflation, raised real wages, and promoted growth,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “As a result, more than 800,000 Americans have been lifted off of SNAP thanks to this President’s successful policies.”
Seasonal variations in SNAP enrollment
Over the long term, the number of people receiving SNAP benefits tends to track the level of poverty in the country since fewer people are eligible for the benefits as their incomes rise, researchers and economists said.
But, they warned, comparing monthly changes in the number of SNAP recipients over a relatively short period of time can be misleading. For instance, there was a similar drop in SNAP recipients during the first six months of 2023 — a time when Trump was attacking then-President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy.
There are often monthly fluctuations in how many people receive SNAP benefits based on a number of factors outside of the trajectory of the economy, such as seasonal hiring, changes to eligibility and natural disasters. Hurricane Helene, for instance, caused a spike in SNAP enrollment in North Carolina and Georgia last fall, and SNAP enrollment in those states remained above their pre-Helene levels into early this year.
“The number of people participating has tracked the number of people in poverty, and that does, in general, track economic conditions,” said Dottie Rosenbaum, director of federal SNAP policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “But there are other factors, like what share of eligible people participate, how well states do at enrolling people, changes in eligibility rules, and whether there was a recent natural disaster.”
When comparing the average number of SNAP recipients over the first six months of this year to the same period last year, there has been a slight increase. On a monthly year-over-year basis, SNAP enrollment in May was relatively unchanged from a year earlier and down by about 300,000 in June to around 41.6 million, according to USDA figures.
Slowing job market
U.S. economic growth did pick up during the spring, compared to the start of the year, driven by an uptick in consumer spending and a rush of companies importing goods ahead of Trump’s new tariffs. But the job market has been slowing in recent months and unemployment has been ticking higher.
Employers added jobs at a relatively healthy clip in September, but there were job losses in industries relied on by lower-wage workers, such as manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, according to data released Thursday. The unemployment rate in September ticked up to 4.4%, the highest level in nearly four years.
Lower-wage workers have also seen a slowdown in their wage growth; pay for the bottom quarter of earners increased 3.7% in July, compared to an increase of 4.7% for the highest earners, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
“The economy is spinning on mud trying to get traction,” said Ismael Cid-Martinez, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, whose research focuses on income inequality. “I would struggle to find any signs to write home about to signify that this is a labor market that’s stronger than the one that we saw over the last five years.”
Recent polls have shown voters increasingly concerned about the economy and Trump’s handling of it. In an NBC News poll earlier this month, 63% of respondents said Trump had fallen short of expectations regarding the economy. In a Fox News poll released this week, 76% of voters said they viewed the economy negatively — worse than the 70% who said the same of Biden at the end of his term.
Food banks said they have seen few signs of food insecurity waning. Feeding America, the country’s largest hunger organization, said that in the first six months of the year, as many as 80% of the food banks it serves reported seeing an increase in demand.
Even if more Americans do see their incomes increase and are no longer eligible for SNAP benefits, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are no longer struggling to put food on the table, said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer for Feeding America. About 37% of people whom Feeding America serves earn too much to qualify for SNAP benefits, but still need to rely on a local food pantry, she said.
A family of four needs to earn less than $3,483 a month to qualify for assistance. If a recipient’s income goes over the limit, even by just a small amount — because their hours increased slightly or they got a small raise — they can lose hundreds of dollars in benefits.
“You may be making $10 more than what is eligible, so you’re really not able to cover all your basic necessities, but you also aren’t able to get the help that you need from our nation’s leading support service for folks facing food insecurity,” Nageotte said. “We call that the benefits cliff, and it is a significant challenge that many, many people experiencing food insecurity are facing.”
Stricter SNAP eligibility
In the coming months, fewer people are projected to be eligible for SNAP benefits, which could drive down the number of enrollees by the millions — even if they don’t see an increase in their income.
Starting this month, the Trump administration began putting sweeping new work requirements in place, which were enacted under the tax bill passed over the summer that Republicans dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Under that legislation, all adults under the age of 65 must now work, volunteer or go to school a minimum of 20 hours a week in order to qualify for benefits for more than three months unless they have a child under the age of 14 or qualify for a disability exemption.
Under the provisions, 2.4 million people could lose SNAP benefits in an average month over the next decade, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
“Just be candid, it feels like a very scary moment of where we are and what’s coming versus a narrative of an economy doing good,” said Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy at Harvard University. “There’s basically a tidal wave of loss that’s coming because people are going to be kicked off SNAP by the millions and the charitable food network and the states cannot make up for the shortfall. So, people are just going to be at a loss, and they are not going to have a way to make ends meet.”