When Milwaukee resident Linda Hopgood found out last summer she was about to lose her food stamp benefits, she immediately started looking for work. But she said she quickly became discouraged by employers telling her she did not have the skills they were looking for.
The 48-year-old former nursing aide has been out of work for four years. She lives in her son’s house and spends her days watching her daughter’s three children. Without the $187 in food stamps she had received each month for the last seven years, she’s now walking to church every day for free meals.
Hopgood lost her benefits when Wisconsin reinstated work requirements for food stamps. With 22 new states reinstating the requirements as of Jan. 1, another 500,000 or more people could find themselves in her situation by spring.
The reinstated requirements are only for able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who have no young children living with them. If they do not work 80 hours per month, or take part in 80 hours of a qualified job-training or educational program, they can only receive food stamp benefits for three months out of every three years.
The federal government suspended the work requirements on those food stamp recipients nationwide in 2009, when jobs disappeared and unemployment rates shot up during the Great Recession. Over time, as their economies have improved, states have had to reinstate the work requirements.
Now, all but seven states — California, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina — and the District of Columbia have work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents in at least part of the state. For work requirements to be waived, unemployment must be higher than 10 percent, or states must prove a lack of jobs.
Some governors have not sought permission to forgo the requirements, despite high unemployment rates. For instance, this year, Mississippi (6.6 percent), New Mexico (6.2 percent) and West Virginia (7 percent) could have applied but didn’t, said Ed Bolen, senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
And South Carolina (6.7 percent) only sought permission to forgo the requirements until March.
