People in those regions are temporarily exempt from national work requirements for the SNAP program, because there are not enough jobs there for everyone who wants one. That means the federal government could cut off assistance to unemployed adults who live in areas where few jobs are available. Across the board, the people with the most to lose under plans to tighten work requirement are Native Americans living on reservations, where large percentages of unemployed adults rely on SNAP. In Kansas, for instance, which reinstated the requirements in October 2014, 40 percent of unemployed adults were still unemployed a year after being kicked off SNAP. When the state dropped its waiver in 2015, the number of unemployed adults in the program immediately fell by nearly 80 percent.

Source: Washington Post May 22, 2017 18:40 UTC