A provision buried in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act quietly reset who has to work to keep food stamps, and the change reached older Americans first. Adults between 55 and 64 who were once excused from the program’s work rules must now log 80 hours a month of employment, job training, or approved volunteering to keep benefits past a three-month limit. Federal agencies began enforcing the expanded age band around March 1, 2026, meaning the first wave of affected recipients has already run up against it. For a group often juggling part-time work, caregiving, and early health problems, the arithmetic is unforgiving.
How the law pushed the work-limit age to 64
The rule at the center of the change is the time limit on able-bodied adults without dependents, known in program shorthand as the ABAWD limit. It caps benefits at three months in any 36-month period unless a recipient meets an 80-hour monthly activity requirement. For years that limit stopped at age 54, and anyone 55 and older aged out of it automatically. The 2025 law lifted the ceiling to 64, folding roughly a decade of older adults back under a work test many had never faced.
The 80 hours can be filled with paid work, a combination of work and training, or a qualifying workfare or volunteer assignment, and they reset monthly rather than averaging across a quarter. Miss the threshold, and benefits stop after the three-month grace window until the recipient either satisfies the hours or qualifies for an exemption. Analysts tracking the rollout note that the compliance clock started ticking in early 2026, so recipients who fell short in spring were among the first to lose coverage under the higher age.
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Why the 60-to-64 group is the most easily misread
The most common misunderstanding involves people between 60 and 64, because SNAP actually runs two separate work rules that are easy to conflate. The general work requirements — registering for work, accepting a suitable job, not quitting without cause — still exempt anyone 60 and older. That older exemption has not changed. What changed is the ABAWD time limit, a distinct rule that now extends to age 64 and does not carry the same blanket exemption for the early-60s cohort.
In practice, that means a 62-year-old can be free of the general work-registration rules yet still be subject to the 80-hour ABAWD test, and can lose benefits after three months for failing it. Elder-law specialists have flagged the overlap as the point where older applicants most often assume they are covered by an exemption that no longer reaches the time limit. The two rules share the word “work” but operate independently, and only one of them still lets someone in their early 60s opt out.
The exemptions that were narrowed
The law also tightened several carve-outs that had shielded vulnerable recipients from the time limit. Exemptions previously extended to veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young adults aging out of foster care were pared back, removing an off-ramp that some 55-to-64 recipients had relied on. Caregiver exemptions were narrowed as well, so that only those caring for a child below a specified age, rather than any dependent household member, are automatically excused.
Exemptions that survive still matter, because they are now the main way an older recipient stays enrolled without hitting 80 hours. A documented physical or mental limitation that prevents work, responsibility for a young child, or participation in an approved treatment program can each satisfy the rule. The federal SNAP eligibility rules spell out which activities and exemptions count, but the burden of proving one falls on the applicant, and a lapse in paperwork can be treated the same as a lapse in hours.
Regaining benefits after the three months lapse is possible but demands action. A recipient who later works 80 hours within a 30-day stretch can requalify, and completing that month of activity generally restores eligibility rather than forcing a brand-new application. States retain limited authority to waive the time limit in areas with high unemployment, and each carries a small pool of discretionary exemptions it can extend case by case. For an older adult in a thin rural labor market, whether a local waiver applies can matter as much as the federal age change itself. The practical effect is a benefit whose stability now depends on documenting hours every month and knowing which exemptions a particular state still recognizes.
The result is a benefit that now behaves differently depending on a recipient’s exact age and paperwork, in a decade of life when steady 80-hour months are often hardest to sustain. Someone 55 to 59 faces both the general work rules and the time limit; someone 60 to 64 escapes the first but not the second; and the exemptions that once caught the gaps have grown narrower.
Whether the expanded age band meaningfully raises work among older adults or simply thins the rolls will not be clear until a full year of enforcement data arrives. What is already certain is that the change lands on people close to, but not yet at, the age when Social Security and Medicare take over — the stretch where a lost grocery benefit is hardest to replace.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
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