Some recipients face a looming deadline to find jobs in order to keep getting benefits
RALEIGH, N.C.—Tiffoney Greene is racing a ticking clock. She has to meet job requirements by March 31, or the federal government will stop helping her buy food.
The same deadline looms around the U.S. as work requirements for nutritional assistance return in 22 states, including North Carolina, Florida and Washington. The federal rules limit Ms. Greene and other able-bodied adults without dependents to three months of food stamps in any three-year period—unless they work at least 80 hours a month, or meet education and training or volunteer benchmarks.
The work requirements date to the welfare overhaul that President Bill Clinton signed 20 years ago, but they were broadly waived in the steep recession that began in 2007 and ended in mid-2009. Now that the economy is steadily, if slowly, improving—the nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9%, half of where it was six years ago—people in many places no longer qualify for the benefits.
The “rationale is the economy has recovered sufficiently” for these people to find jobs, said Robert Doar, a former commissioner of New York City’s Human Resources Administration who is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Officials in some states—including Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia and New Mexico—have opted not to pursue waivers of the federal work-requirement rules in areas that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, said could still qualify.
Yet joblessness is higher for many groups, including people who lack a high-school diploma, and six million Americans are working part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work, well above prerecession levels, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 500,000 to one million people will lose access to food stamps this year, citing the experience in states where work requirements already returned. “Many in this population, which generally has limited education and skills and limited job prospects, struggle to find employment even in normal economic times,” it said in a January report.
The U.S. Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service, which administers the federally funded food-stamp program, hasn’t estimated how many people could lose their benefits.
Officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the program helped feed an average 45.8 million people in the government’s latest fiscal year, down slightly for the second straight year but still up substantially from prerecession levels.
There are 4.7 million able-bodied adult food-stamp recipients without dependents, and they receive about $164 each month on average, according to the USDA.
In North Carolina, work requirements are back for roughly 55,000 people in 23 counties so far. The Republican-led state, which cited its efforts to help people find paying and volunteer work, will voluntarily add work requirements in its 77 other counties on July 1.
“I believe in work and I believe in the fact that individuals want to be able to provide for themselves,” said Sherry Bradsher, the state’s deputy secretary for human services.
Ms. Greene, 43, who lives in subsidized housing, has relied on food stamps on and off for five years. A letter from the county informing her that she could lose the food money put a damper on the progress she had made since her past days of being homeless, she said.
“I cried when I found out,” she said.
A high-school graduate with some credits toward an associate degree, she was formerly a manager at a barbecue restaurant. But she said she lost her job in 2013 because she didn’t have a reliable way to get to work after she and her husband divorced. She said she lived in a homeless shelter for women, while working as day laborer and saving money so she could move into a transitional housing program for homeless people.
“I’m trying to find any kind of job, anything,” she said.
Data from Wisconsin—which began reinstating work requirements last year under the direction of Republican Gov. Scott Walker—show 30,453 people lost their food-stamp access between July and December. The state’s Department of Health Services noted that 8,334 people on food stamps, including adults who need to meet the work requirement, got jobs through a work-training program last year.
In New Mexico, where an estimated 6.6% unemployment rate in December was among the highest in the nation, 17,500 people were put on the three-month clock to meet work requirements on Jan. 1, while people in other areas got waivers.
The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty is asking the U.S. District Court in New Mexico to halt the new requirements, arguing the state is violating the law by doing a poor job screening and informing people. “You’re just setting people up to fail,” said Louise Pocock, a staff attorney with the center.
A spokesman for Republican Gov. Susana Martinez referred questions about the food-stamp waivers to the state’s Human Services Department. A spokesman there said the agency believes many statements in that court filing are “inaccurate,” and the agency in its own filing said it properly incorporated the new rules. The agency “will continue to provide assistance finding work or job training opportunities to those in need,” the spokesman said.
—Ben Leubsdorf contributed to this article.
Write to Jon Kamp at jon.kamp@wsj.com and Valerie Bauerlein atvalerie.bauerlein@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The number of people on food stamps has ranged from about 26 million in 2007 to about 47 million in 2014. An earlier version of the chart that accompanies this article had incorrect labeling and showed figures ranging from about 26,000 in 2007 to about 47,000 in 2014.
