Massachusetts Has 183,809 Fewer SNAP Recipients Than in July 2025, as Federal Work Rules Reach More Adults

The Department of Transitional Assistance, the Massachusetts agency that runs food stamps, is defending itself in court over a phone line that hung up on most callers this year. At the same time, federal figures show its SNAP caseload has shrunk by more than one in six people since last summer.

Massachusetts had 893,889 people on SNAP in July 2026, down from 1,077,698 in July 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s monthly participation table, which carries data as of Oct. 9, 2026. That is 183,809 fewer recipients, a drop of about 17.1%. USDA marks the July 2026 count as initial and subject to significant revision.

More adults now face a three-month clock

The shrinking rolls line up with the July 2025 federal budget law, H.R. 1, which pulled far more adults under SNAP’s work rules.

A presentation to Gov. Maura Healey’s Anti-Hunger Task Force in October 2025 estimated that about 99,000 people in Massachusetts would become newly subject to strict work requirements over the following year, according to the state slide deck. The new rules reach adults ages 55 to 65 and parents whose children are over 14, and they remove exceptions that had covered homeless people, veterans and young adults who aged out of foster care.

The same presentation said Massachusetts lost the regional waivers that had paused the rules across large parts of the state, including Western, Central and Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands, the Merrimack Valley and the North Shore. It also projected that about 9,500 immigrants would lose eligibility as the law narrowed which noncitizens can get benefits, with households that have no eligible member closed at recertification.

Benefit sizes are shifting too. The deck estimated that about 45,000 households were at risk of smaller benefits because of changes to how utility costs are counted. Massachusetts issues about $220 million in SNAP benefits a month, roughly $2.7 billion a year, according to the presentation, so every closed or reduced case shows up in what families can spend at the grocery store.

The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s guide to the rules says adults 18 through 64 who are not exempt and don’t meet the work rules can get only 3 months of SNAP in a 36-month period, and that the current 36-month period ends Jan. 1, 2027. The group also notes that DTA’s own SNAP regulations have not yet been updated to reflect H.R. 1.

A phone line in Suffolk Superior Court

Losing benefits over paperwork has become its own fight. The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute filed a class action in Suffolk Superior Court against DTA Commissioner Michael Cole, arguing that the agency’s assistance line automatically disconnected 74% to 81% of incoming calls on average in the first six months of 2026, leaving people unable to report changes or check on recertification, The Boston Globe reported Sept. 24. The named plaintiff, a Salem mother of 8-year-old twins, lost a $926 monthly benefit on July 4, according to the complaint as described by the paper.

The suit says nearly 80,000 households have left SNAP and the caseload has fallen 18% since August 2024, and it asks the court to restore benefits that were improperly denied or ended and to fix access to the agency. The complaint argues the disconnections violate DTA’s duty to serve people on a “fair, just, and equitable basis” and deny benefits without due process, the Globe reported.

DTA said no one in Massachusetts should go hungry, blamed the federal changes, and said it has expanded outreach, invested in technology and hired 118 caseworkers since January, according to the Globe.

Staffing is also a budget question. The fiscal 2027 budget funds DTA caseworkers at about $122 million, below the roughly $148 million Healey and the Senate had sought, State House News Service reported in July. DTA spokesperson Cecille Avila told the news service the agency had no plans to cut staff.

A 12.49% error rate and a $394 million risk

The state’s accuracy record raises the stakes. USDA’s fiscal 2025 error rate table puts Massachusetts at 12.49%, above the national rate of 10.62% and well past the 6% mark at which states start paying part of benefit costs. The rate was 14.1% the year before, and roughly 4.5% in fiscal 2018, WBUR reported.

Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states at 10% or higher pay 15% of their benefit costs. The task force presentation put that potential bill at up to $394 million a year starting in federal fiscal 2028, plus about $53 million more a year from the state’s administrative share rising from 50% to 75%. The deck also stated plainly that “payment errors are not fraud.”

Other states are seeing the same pull. The site has covered Florida’s 629,600-person drop and North Carolina’s 109,384, as national participation fell to a 17-year low.

Nearly 894,000 still enrolled

Even after the drop, Massachusetts still had close to 894,000 people on SNAP in July, and USDA’s table shows every state except Alaska lost participants over the year. Nationally, enrollment fell from 41,603,048 to 36,087,667.

Massachusetts adults who got a work-rule notice, or whose benefits stopped, can ask DTA whether an exemption applies, such as living with a child under 14 or a health limitation, and can appeal a closure. MLRI’s guide lists the exemptions and the ways to meet the work rules through a job, training or volunteering.

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

Image: Christian David – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons