When studying how workers rely on federal food benefits, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center found themselves butting up against a persistent misinterpretation.
“There's a myth that people receiving SNAP to their household maybe aren't working, and that's really not true," said Professor of Sociology and Labor Center Director Jasmine Kerrissey, also a co-author of the study. “We find that three fourths of people receiving SNAP are working, and for the remaining groups that aren't, there's very good reasons for that - it's people with disabilities, it's people with young children at home. It's for pregnant people.”
The government shutdown, which caused the more than 41 million Americans who rely on SNAP to go without benefits at the beginning of November, inspired the Labor Center to dig into how the program impacts the almost half million workers in Massachusetts who feed their families with it. That’s compounded by the still unfolding impact of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed in July that will strip its benefits away from millions across the country.
“There's some changes that are coming just now, implemented in November of this year, and it's going to restrict the number of people who are eligible for SNAP benefit," said Kerrissey. "So, the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, estimates that SNAP participation will reduce by an average of 2.4 million people each month with these new implementations. So, some of the new requirements is that people need to be older in order to be excluded from work requirements, and there's other exemptions for veterans, for those aging out of foster care, some exemptions around caregiving. So, there's a whole bunch of issues that make SNAP harder to receive.”
The study illuminates disparities about how food insecurity hits different sectors of the Massachusetts population.
“In Hampden County, where Springfield is, 19% of people who are workers are receiving SNAP benefits," said Labor Center Fellow and report co-author Nathan Meyers. "And that's very high. In Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts, that's 12.2% of workers. Those are both higher than the state average by quite a bit. The state average is 10.8%. So, we need to think about where workers are in the economy. It's not just about access to jobs, but access to jobs that pay livable wages.”
“The other thing that really stands out to me is the gender inequality that comes out," said Kerrissey. "So, more women workers are receiving SNAP compared to men workers. So, about 12% of women workers receive SNAP benefits to their households, and 9.5% of men workers, and I think this reflects the gendered wage gaps that we know exist, and also caregiving burdens that women have are more likely to have, like being the head of a single-family household, having children to support.”
The increasing need for workers to rely on SNAP is part of a larger trend in U.S. labor conditions.
“In the 1970s workers received about 60% of the economy, the money in the economy in terms of pay and compensation, and that has declined to just over 50%," said Meyers. "So, there's been about a 15% decline in the share of the economy going to workers, and that has not been a decline that's been evenly spread, but it's been borne especially by workers in middle earnings jobs, and low wage workers have fared poorly as well.”
Thanks to the Trump Administration’s cuts, Meyers says social disruption is inevitable if the workplaces that are expanding the most right now are also the most likely to employ workers who rely on programs like SNAP.
“You can think of healthcare – like nursing assistants, personal care aides – where over 30% of them are receiving food assistance," he said. "That is where the economy is expanding, the healthcare sector. You can think about Uber and Amazon and transportation, you could think about food service, those are a lot of places where you see expansion in the economy, and those jobs that are being created are low-wage jobs. So, we have this tension between a push to reduce food assistance, but at the same time, there's an increasing need for food assistance, and those two factors are in conflict with one another.”
Kerrissey says another major misconception about SNAP concerns what type of employers are failing to pay workers living wages. It also underscores that the program effectively pumps money into some of the nation’s largest employers - the same employers who are failing to pay workers livable wages.
“There is a report from the Government Accountability Office from 2020 that lists all of the major companies that employ workers who receive SNAP, and I went through that list, and it's really clear that these are the biggest companies in the state, in the nation, so, big chain companies that are low wage employers," she said. "So, in that way, these companies are really being subsidized by SNAP, in the sense that they're not paying as much as they could be paying, or maybe they should be paying, and SNAP is left to fill in the hunger factor.”
The data in the UMass report shows that the pervasive myth about SNAP beneficiaries not being a vital part of the U.S. economy is fueling an unsustainable situation.
“We should think about how employers are allowed to hire employees," said Meyers. "We could think about factors such as raising wages, minimum wages, or thinking about scheduling and hours for workers who are receiving SNAP so that they can receive sufficient hourly wages and hours to earn enough to be lifted out of poverty and afforded dignity.”
A coalition of Attorneys General – including Democrat Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts – are leading a legal challenge to additional new SNAP guidance concerning some legal immigrants’ eligibility, which they argue is illegal.
