Georgia Now Has 157,551 Fewer Residents Receiving SNAP Than in July 2025, as Federal Work Rules and Cost Shifts Take Hold

Roughly one in 10 Georgians who were getting SNAP food benefits in July 2025 was off the program a year later. The state’s count fell from 1,483,061 people to 1,325,510, a drop of 157,551, according to the latest participation table from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The decline came as Georgia began enforcing broader federal work rules and as the state braces for new costs tied to one of the country’s highest SNAP error rates.

How Georgia’s drop compares

The USDA’s persons-participating table, with data as of Oct. 9, 2026, shows Georgia’s enrollment down about 10.6% between July 2025 and July 2026. The July 2026 figures are initial counts and can be revised.

Georgia’s percentage decline was smaller than in four of its neighbors. Florida fell about 22%, from 2,849,239 to 2,219,639. Alabama dropped from 730,758 to 645,376, about 11.7%. South Carolina went from 564,900 to 481,856, about 14.7%, and Tennessee from 696,765 to 609,517, about 12.5%. Farther up the coast, North Carolina’s decline, from 1,353,090 to 1,243,706, was about 8.1%.

Nationally, the program shrank from 41,603,048 people to 36,087,667 over the same 12 months, a loss of more than 5.5 million participants. The site has tracked the steepest state drops, including Arizona’s and Texas’, and the national count reaching its lowest point in 17 years.

The work rule that started Nov. 1, 2025

The biggest policy change in Georgia took effect a year ago. The Georgia Department of Human Services announced that starting Nov. 1, 2025, it would apply a time-limited work requirement to able-bodied adults without dependents, a group the department described as ages 18 to 65, following the federal budget law known as H.R. 1.

Under the rule, those adults must work or take part in an approved work or training program for at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a month. The department lists three situations that put someone outside the rule: being pregnant, caring for a dependent child under 14 in the SNAP household, or not being mentally or physically fit for work.

Adults who do not meet the requirement for three full months within a 36-month period, without good reason, lose their benefits. The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute notes that the federal law now reaches adults up to 64 and parents or caregivers of children ages 14 to 17.

The institute counted about 1.4 million Georgians, in roughly 700,000 households, on SNAP before the changes, including about 640,000 children in 2024. Georgia had already seen a decline of nearly 30,000 among able-bodied adults without dependents enrolled in SNAP during 2024, before the federal law expanded the rules.

Hours in an approved employment or training program count toward the same 80-hour total as paid work, according to the department’s notice, so a person in a qualifying job program can stay eligible without a paycheck.

Georgia’s 15.2% error rate and the bill behind it

The enrollment drop is only one pressure. Georgia’s SNAP payment error rate for federal fiscal year 2025 was 15.2%, one of the highest in the country, the Georgia Recorder reported after USDA released the figures in June.

Georgia is well above the national figure. USDA put the national payment error rate for fiscal 2025 at 10.62%, with $10.1 billion in improper payments counting both overpayments and underpayments. “These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins said in the department’s June 24 announcement.

That matters because H.R. 1 ties a new state share of benefit costs to error rates. States at 10% or higher will pay 15% of benefit costs, the top tier. Based on 2024 spending, the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute estimated that tier would cost Georgia about $487 million a year. A 5% share would cost about $162 million, and a 10% share about $325 million.

Georgia’s rate is high enough to buy time. The Georgia Recorder reported that Georgia is one of six states eligible for an additional year’s delay in the benefit cost-sharing requirement, and that the state budget includes $6.9 million to work on error rates. The Department of Human Services was reviewing its options, which include paying the penalty, appealing it, or reinvesting half of it in program improvements. Separately, since this October, states have had to pay 75% of SNAP’s administrative costs, up from half.

What happens after Nov. 30

For Georgians already cut off under the work rule, the state’s notice sets out a path back. Benefits stay off until Nov. 30, 2026, when a new application can be filed, or until the person meets the work requirement.

That date is about a month away. Adults who have started working at least 80 hours a month, or who now qualify for an exemption, such as becoming responsible for a child under 14, do not have to wait for Nov. 30 to regain eligibility under the department’s notice.

For households that remain on the program, the annual adjustment on Oct. 1 raised the maximum benefit for a family of four to $1,023 a month. Other states facing the same cost shift have put numbers on it too, including Pennsylvania, which could owe roughly 10% of benefit costs starting in October 2027.

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

Image: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons