Fact check: 4.3 million fewer SNAP recipients tied to new work rules

The Agriculture Department credited a nearly 4.3 million decline in SNAP participation from January 2025 to January 2026 to a crackdown on fraud and an improved economy, according to preliminary government data released by the department. In comments attributed to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the department said it had “moved 4.3 million Americans off of the food stamp program,” adding that “a lot of that is fraud,” “a lot of it is people taking the program that shouldn’t have been,” and “a lot of it is just a better economy.”

Experts interviewed by the Associated Press said the fraud explanation did not line up with the size of the overall change. They noted that the federal government’s own most recently available data shows a comparatively small share of participants being disqualified for fraud, and they questioned whether fraud controls could plausibly account for a drop approaching 10% in the number of people receiving benefits.

Rollins’ fraud claim came alongside arguments that unemployment and job conditions did not point strongly toward a simple “good economy” explanation. Roger Figueroa, an assistant professor at Cornell University who studies food insecurity, said the decline in participation “seems to be related to the program being harder to access,” rather than reflecting only broad economic conditions. Caitlin Caspi, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut who studies food insecurity, said she did not see “any evidence supporting a significant reduction in fraud as a driver” of the participation decline, and she also said the unemployment rate trend did not match the pattern of falling SNAP participation.

The AP fact check also examined what the change in law did to eligibility. The Associated Press described the changes as coming from Republicans’ large tax-and-spending bill, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” or H.R. 1, which the article said would cut $186 billion in federal spending—20%—from SNAP over 10 years, citing the Congressional Budget Office. The experts said several provisions, including tightened work requirements, reduced the number of people who could meet eligibility rules and exemptions.

According to the Associated Press, H.R. 1 mandated that certain adults who had previously been exempt from work requirements are now subject to them, unless they qualify for an exemption. The story described two work-requirement tracks: general rules for most people ages 16 to 59, and stricter guidelines for able-bodied adults without dependents. Under the stricter track described in the fact check, participants can meet requirements by working or participating in a work program for at least 80 hours a month, and the article said the work requirement became more difficult to avoid as changes reduced exemptions for certain groups.

The Associated Press detailed specific exemption changes attributed to the new law, including raising the exemption age for able-bodied adults without dependents from older than 54 to older than 64, lowering the age of children a person is responsible for from 18 to 14 to qualify for an exemption, and removing exemptions for homeless people, veterans, and former foster children ages 24 and younger. In an interview reflected in the fact check, Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan, argued that for many families, meeting a strict hours requirement is not realistic on a short timeline given skills gaps and local job availability, saying families have “lots of really complicated situations” and that people cannot be expected to “go find 80 hours a month of work” in “10 days or in one month.”

The Associated Press also addressed a separate line of argument tied to fraud and eligibility policy mechanics. The USDA directed the AP to reporting from the New York Post and the Foundation for Government Accountability on broad-based categorical eligibility, a policy described in the fact check as allowing states flexibility in how SNAP eligibility is determined. The fact check said the policy allows applicants in most states to be eligible for SNAP if they qualify for non-cash benefits from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program or similar state-run efforts, and it said the Trump administration has hoped to do away with the policy but that it remains a legal option.

In the “by the numbers” section, the Associated Press described participation counts at the start and end of the comparison window. The story said SNAP participation was about 42.83 million people in January 2025 and fell by nearly 10% to about 38.55 million by January 2026, with most of the decline occurring in the second half of 2025 after President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1 in July. The Associated Press said the decline was 743,572 people from January 2025 to June 2025, and about 3.47 million people from July 2025 to January 2026.

The Associated Press also cited a Congressional Budget Office projection that, in an August 2025 report, estimated that certain provisions would “reduce participation in SNAP by roughly 2.4 million people in an average month over the 2025-2034 period.” Caspi said, in response to the question of what explains the participation decline, that “it shouldn’t be surprising” to see the decline and that it should not be “a leap in logic to think that these declines are attributable to H.R. 1.”