What happens when you must work for SNAP (unemployment rate, wage, poll)
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Apparently, in Maine they made a change so that if your are an adult without a disability and with no dependent children, you must do some sort of work, training or volunteering to receive SNAP benefits.
The reported result was:
Quote:
After forcing these individuals to either work part-time for twenty hours each week, enroll in a vocational program, or volunteer for a minimum of twenty-four hours per month, the numbers showed a significant drop from 12,000 enrollees to just over 2,500.
Edit:
The poll question should be:
Is it a good idea to require adults without disabilities or dependent children to do something to receive SNAP assistance?
We know the vast majority of SNAP beneficiaries are children, the disabled and elderly.
Some college students qualify, too.
Then there's everyone else. Going back almost 20 years, SNAP limits the duration to 3 months in a 3 year period for the unemployed. To continue to participate, the beneficiary must work at least 20 hrs a week or be in some sort of state qualified job training program.
States may request exemption from these standards based upon exceeding an unemployment thresh hold in their state.
The stimulus temporarily suspended work requirements for able-bodied SNAP participation for 18 months , beginning in 4/2009 due to the Great Recession. As is common with all temporary measures, when they expire people howl at the moon.
As the employment outlook in various states improved, many states no longer qualified for the state by state waivers based on unemployment rates. Politicians rarely waste an opportunity to toot their horn and many issued press releases announcing they were requiring able-bodied SNAP recipients to work. Reality was and remains, their state no longer qualified for a waiver.
Big Food and Big Grocer are perennial lobbyists for SNAP benefits.
Last edited by middle-aged mom; 08-28-2015 at 03:12 PM..
Hey OP, that photo the article used, is NOT from Maine, LOL. It's from New York City and it's dated circa 2010, not 2015 like the article linked to......
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