Florida Has 629,600 Fewer People on Food Stamps Than a Year Ago, the Second-Largest Drop of Any State After Texas in New USDA Data

By early this year, Florida’s food stamp caseload had already sunk to its lowest level since March 2010, according to the Florida Policy Institute. The latest federal count shows it kept falling. Florida had 2,219,639 people on SNAP in July 2026, down 629,600 from 2,849,239 a year earlier, a 22% drop.

Only Texas lost more people from the program over the same 12 months, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Second only to Texas

The USDA’s persons-participating table, with data as of Oct. 9, 2026, ranks the biggest declines between July 2025 and July 2026:

• Texas: down 683,838, from 3,446,051 to 2,762,213
• Florida: down 629,600, from 2,849,239 to 2,219,639
• Arizona: down 448,578, from 882,419 to 433,841
• Illinois: down 407,079, from 1,887,917 to 1,480,838
• California: down 356,057, from 5,449,432 to 5,093,375

By percentage, Florida’s 22.1% decline ranked fifth, behind Arizona at 50.8%, Louisiana and Nevada at about 23.3% each, and Oklahoma at 22.5%. The July 2026 numbers are initial counts and may be revised.

Nationally, participation fell from 41,603,048 to 36,087,667, which means Florida alone accounted for more than one of every nine people who left SNAP during the year. The site has covered the Arizona and Texas declines and the national total’s fall to a 17-year low.

What drove Florida’s decline

The Florida Policy Institute traced the drop to the federal budget law known as H.R. 1, enacted July 4, 2025. In a June analysis using state caseload figures, it reported that participation fell about 10%, or 277,513 people, in the first five months after the law passed, from 2,886,838 in July 2025 to 2,609,325 in December. In the year before the law, the caseload had dropped about 3.2%. In January 2026 alone, the institute counted roughly 20,000 more people leaving the program.

The law cut federal SNAP funding by about $187 billion over 10 years, the institute noted, and it changed who qualifies and how much states pay.

The institute pointed to several parts of the law, citing estimates from the Florida Department of Children and Families presented to a state House committee:

• About 9,753 lawfully present immigrants became ineligible under narrower noncitizen rules.
• Expanded work reporting requirements put benefits at risk for about 181,217 current participants.
• New DCF procedures to verify shelter and utility costs may be making it harder for some families to prove their housing expenses, which the institute described as a possible factor.

The institute also listed factors that predate or sit outside the law: rescinded equity initiatives, the late-2025 federal government shutdown, the end of protections for participants whose benefits were stolen, and USDA demands for participants’ sensitive personal data.

The decline is not a sign of a stronger economy, the institute argued. Caseloads normally rise with unemployment, and the institute said the current drop is happening even as unemployment and food costs push need higher.

Every county lost participants

The decline reached the whole state. Every Florida county saw a significant drop in 2025 after the law passed, according to the institute, with the steepest rate, roughly 14%, in Monroe and Collier counties.

Nationally, the same pattern showed up in food banks. The Independent reported on Oct. 26 that nearly three-quarters of 48 large food banks surveyed by NBC News saw increased demand. It also cited a Pew Research Center survey finding that 22% of Americans worry daily about affording food.

The institute put a cost on losing benefits as well. It cited research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health estimating about $1,400 more in health care costs per participant per year without SNAP, and a Food Research and Action Center estimate that each $1 of SNAP spending generates $1.80 in economic activity.

Florida’s error rate and the 2028 bill

Florida also faces a new expense tied to payment errors. Under H.R. 1, states with error rates of 6% or more must pay part of grocery benefits as early as fiscal 2028, and their share of administrative costs began rising this October, when the federal share fell to 25%. USDA put the national error rate for fiscal 2025 at 10.62% in its June 24 announcement.

The institute said Florida’s high error rate could qualify it for a delay until at least 2029, or possibly 2030. It added that DCF’s efforts to bring the rate down are expected to add to the caseload decline.

The institute’s outlook was blunt. “Unless Congress acts to reverse the cuts made to SNAP in H.R. 1,” it wrote, the decline in Florida’s caseload will continue. With the July count already 629,600 below the year before, the next USDA release will show whether the pace that began in mid-2025 is slowing or holding.

For Floridians still on the program, the October cost-of-living update raised the maximum benefit for a family of four to $1,023 a month.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons