What are the USDA FNS national SNAP work participation rates for fiscal year 2023 and 2024 and projections for 2025?
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Executive summary
USDA FNS reports show SNAP averaged about 42.2 million participants per month in FY2023 and about 41.7 million in FY2024; FNS’s annual data table also lists an FY2025 annual summary of 42,406,479 participants (published data file) while ERS and FNS note FY2023 federal cost ~$112–113 billion and FY2024 federal spending ~$99.8 billion [1] [2] [3]. Sources do not provide a single explicit FNS “work participation rate” number for SNAP overall for FY2023–FY2025; available reporting instead focuses on participant counts, spending, and policy changes affecting ABAWD (able‑bodied adults without dependents) work rules and state waiver allocations [1] [2] [4].
1. What the record actually reports: participation and spending, not a single work‑rate metric
USDA’s FNS and ERS publications emphasize participants and costs: FY2023 SNAP served an average of roughly 42.1–42.2 million people per month at an annual federal cost near $112–113 billion (FNS Characteristics report and ERS summary) and FY2024 averaged about 41.7 million participants with federal spending reported at $99.8 billion [1] [2] [5]. The FNS annual summary file also includes an FY2025 line showing 42,406,479 participants in the FY2025 annual summary table [3]. None of these cited documents present a single nationwide “SNAP work participation rate” analogous to TANF work participation metrics; instead FNS reports program participation, spending, and ABAWD waiver allocations [1] [2] [4].
2. Why you might be searching for a “work participation rate”
Public interest in a SNAP work participation rate usually relates to the ABAWD rule — the time limit and work or waiver conditions for able‑bodied adults without dependents — and to policy changes from the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and later legislation [4] [6]. FNS materials describe how waivers and discretionary exemptions are allocated (the FRA 2023 reduced the allocation for discretionary exemptions to 8 percent for FY2024 and thereafter) and how states report and use waivers, which affects how many ABAWDs are subject to work requirements [4]. Those administrative figures matter for enforcement and state‑level counts but do not form a single national “work participation rate” in the cited files [4].
3. What FNS does publish that bears on work rules: ABAWD allocations and waivers
FNS publishes policy guidance and records of waiver materials for FY1997–2024 and explains the FRA 2023 change that cut the discretionary exemption allocation to 8 percent for FY2024 forward; that is an explicit programmatic lever affecting how many people can be exempted from ABAWD time limits [4]. The State Options Report and other FNS releases catalog which states use waivers and other policy options, and Congress and CRS analyses reference FNS data when discussing ABAWD implementation [7] [6]. These sources show policy levers and state practices, not a national "work participation rate" figure [4] [7].
4. Projections for FY2025: what the data file shows and what’s not in the record
The FNS annual summary data file lists an FY2025 participant count of 42,406,479 with associated annual summaries for households and benefits (FY2025 line in the published file), which can be read as a near‑term realized count rather than a theoretical projection [3]. ERS and FNS publications referenced here do not contain an explicit FNS projection of a national SNAP work participation rate for FY2025; available sources do not mention an FNS national work participation projection for FY2025 [3] [2].
5. Conflicting framings and what to watch next
Different outlets and analysts emphasize different metrics: ERS highlights participant counts and program cost trends (noting SNAP accounted for 68% of USDA nutrition assistance spending in FY2023), while FNS focuses on monthly/annual participant and benefit tables and on administrative policy (waivers, discretionary exemption allocations) that affect ABAWDs [5] [1] [4]. Watch FNS’s program data pages and the State Options Report for updated waiver allocations and any published ABAWD counts; Congress’s CRS products often repackage FNS data into policy analyses that may provide alternative summaries [6] [7].
Limitations: the provided search results do not contain a single, explicit USDA FNS “national SNAP work participation rate” value for FY2023, FY2024, or an FNS projection for FY2025; assertions above are limited to participant counts, spending, and waiver/policy descriptions that are present in the cited documents [1] [2] [3] [4]. If you want a state‑level ABAWD participation or an estimated national “work participation” numerator/denominator constructed from QC or state reporting, I can extract and compute numbers from FNS monthly/annual data tables [8] [3] or pull state waiver allocations from the State Options Report [7].