Able-bodied adults with no children lose their food assistance if they fail to work 80 hours a month for three months in a three-year period unless they live in a state with a waiver. Under the looming changes, waivers from this work requirement, once common, will be much harder to come by. Cuyahoga County and its urban heart, Cleveland, are preparing for the worst. But even for struggling areas like Cuyahoga County, where the majority of food assistance recipients in Ohio live, the bar will soon be too high for waivers from Washington’s work requirement. Such waivers will only go to “labor market areas” defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and an area’s unemployment rate will have to be both 20 percent above the national unemployment rate over a two-year period and at least 6 percent.

Source: New York Times January 25, 2020 19:52 UTC