About 36.1 million people received food stamps in July, down from 41.6 million a year earlier. The average benefit barely moved, at $187.56 a person against $187.90 in July 2025. USDA’s latest monthly table shows the program shrinking through headcount, not through smaller payments.
Nine straight monthly drops since October
The National View Summary, posted with data as of October 9, puts July participation at 36,087,667 people in 19,636,409 households. A year earlier the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps, reached 41,603,048 people in 22,350,446 households. That is 5,515,381 fewer people.
The slide has been steady. October 2025 stood at 40,671,594 people, and every month since has been lower: 39,999,890 in November, 39,207,898 in December and 38,552,133 in January. The count slipped under 37 million in May, at 36,726,292, and reached 36,521,606 in June.
From October to July, participation fell by 4,583,927 people. July’s drop from June was 433,939, about 1.2%. USDA labels fiscal 2026 data preliminary and subject to revision, and it notes the numbers may include disaster assistance.
USDA’s SNAP data page was updated October 20 and lists July 2026 as the latest available month. Any later revision could move the 36.1 million, so the figure is best read as USDA’s first count for July.
Retirement deadlines, in your inbox: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our SNAP Recertification & EBT Checklist as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the SNAP checklist →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
What a $187.56 average does and does not say
The $187.56 figure is the average monthly benefit per person, not a payment every recipient gets. Per household, the average was $344.70 in July, compared with $349.76 a year before. Individual amounts depend on income, household size and expenses, so a given household may be far above or below the average.
The per-person average peaked at $192.52 in December and slid to a low of $185.81 in June. It ticked up to $187.56 in July. Fiscal 2025 averaged $189.35 a person across 42,145,499 people, and fiscal 2024 averaged $186.81 across 41,859,377 people.
People are leaving faster than households are. Households fell by 2,714,037, about 12.1%, while people fell 13.3%. The average household in July held about 1.84 people, so the rolls are losing larger households as well as single adults.
Total benefit costs tell the same story as the headcount. USDA recorded $6.77 billion in July, against $7.82 billion in July 2025. That is a drop of about $1.05 billion in one month’s spending. Fiscal 2025 cost $95.76 billion in all, against $93.84 billion in fiscal 2024, and July’s pace multiplied by 12 would come to about $81 billion, a simple projection and not a USDA forecast.
Where the rolls fell fastest
USDA’s state participation table shows how uneven the drop is. Nationwide, participation is down 13.3% from July 2025. Arizona is down 50.8%, from 882,419 people to 433,841, a drop of more than half.
Florida fell 22.1%, to 2,219,639 people, and Illinois fell 21.6%, to 1,480,838. Texas dropped 19.8%, from 3,446,051 to 2,762,213. California fell just 6.5%, though with 5,093,375 people it still has the biggest caseload. New York is down 9.3% and Pennsylvania 11.9%.
A few places moved the other way. Alaska grew 3.5%, to 69,522 people. Ohio’s count was almost flat from June to July, at 1,317,219. Arizona also rose 3.0% from June to July, from 421,147 to 433,841 people, after a fall of more than half from a year earlier. The state table carries its own warning that June and July 2026 data are preliminary and subject to significant revision.
Georgia is down 10.6%, to 1,325,510 people, and Wyoming is down 5.8%, to 24,903. Florida, which lost 5.9% in the single month from June to July, is the clearest case of a large state still falling fast. Each state runs its own caseload, so the national number hides very different local trends.
The 2025 law behind the new SNAP rules
USDA’s implementation page for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act says the law was signed July 4, 2025. It lists SNAP provisions on work requirements, eligibility for noncitizens, utility allowances, state matching funds and state administrative cost sharing.
The work-requirement provision appears there as Section 10102, with memos on exceptions, waivers and time-limit changes. Noncitizen eligibility is Section 10108, and USDA links a memo and a question-and-answer sheet for it. The page was last updated June 11, 2026, and it gives no effective dates.
The monthly tables do not say why any person left the rolls. They do not separate those who found work, lost eligibility, missed a renewal or stopped applying. USDA’s page on the law gives no counts for any of those groups, so the causes behind the 5.5 million drop remain open.
What the data does show is timing. Participation was above 41 million in July 2025, the month the law was signed, and the fiscal 2025 average was 42,145,499. Every month from October to July has come in lower. A household that stays enrolled still has to meet its own recertification dates, which are set state by state, and the USDA SNAP site is the free place to look up the rules.
Still on SNAP after the rolls shrank?
A household that misses a recertification or a required report can drop off the rolls even though nothing about its income changed. With 5.5 million fewer people enrolled than a year ago, the drop is happening in plain sight, one paperwork deadline at a time.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer holds 51 state packs and a renewal and reporting calendar, so each household can write its own dates in one place. Part 4 covers the 2025 work-rule change, and the free official source for program rules is USDA.
Get the SNAP renewal calendar and state pack organizer →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Steps to Stop the Scams That Took $7.7 Billion From Seniors
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
