SNAP work requirements in 2026: what changed and who is exempt

SNAP has two layers of work rules. The first applies to most adults; the second, the time limit for “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWDs), is the one that changed in 2025 and is being implemented through 2026. This page describes both as USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service presents them, and notes where the law has moved ahead of the FNS page.

The general work requirements

If you are 16 to 59 and able to work, you must register for work, take a suitable job if offered, not quit a job or cut your hours below 30 a week without good cause, and take part in an employment and training program if your state assigns you to one. You are excused if you already work 30 hours a week (or earn the equivalent of 30 hours at the federal minimum wage), are meeting work rules for TANF or unemployment insurance, care for a child under six or an incapacitated person, are physically or mentally unable to work, are in a drug or alcohol treatment program, or are in school or training at least half time. Breaking these rules means losing SNAP for at least a month; repeat failures bring longer disqualifications.

The ABAWD time limit

Adults subject to the time limit can receive SNAP for only three months in any three-year period unless they work, volunteer or take part in a work program for at least 80 hours a month, or do workfare. The three months do not have to be consecutive. Once used, the person must meet the requirement for 30 days to requalify, or wait until a new three-year period begins.

What the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed

Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, rewrote the time-limit rules:

• Ages. The limit now applies to adults 18 through 64; before the law it ended at 54 (it had been 49 until 2023).
• Dependents. The exemption for a parent or household member responsible for a child now applies only when the child is under 14, not under 18.
• Removed exemptions. The exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and former foster youth up to age 24, which Congress added in 2023, were repealed.
• New exemption. American Indians, Urban Indians and California Indians as defined in federal law are exempt.
• Waivers. States can waive the time limit only in areas with an unemployment rate above 10 percent; the previous standards (a lack of sufficient jobs, or unemployment 20 percent above the national average) are gone. Alaska and Hawaii received temporary flexibility tied to their unemployment rates.
• Discretionary exemptions. The pool of individual exemptions a state can hand out each year was cut to 1 percent of its covered caseload.

Exemptions that did not change: people medically certified as unfit for work, pregnant women, anyone under 18 or over the new upper age, and anyone already excused from the general work requirements.

Where FNS stands

As of its July 16, 2026 update, the FNS work-requirements page still describes the pre-2025 rules (ages 18 to 54, the 2023 exemptions) and says the agency “will update this page once the guidance is released.” States received implementation memos from FNS in late 2025 and have been applying the new rules on different timetables, generally at each household’s next recertification or periodic report. If you are between 55 and 64, or you were exempt as a veteran, as homeless, or as a parent of a teenager, expect your state to ask about work hours at your next review.

What to do

Read every notice. If you are told you are subject to the time limit and believe you are exempt, the notice explains how to request a review; medical exemptions need a statement from a provider, and states must accept any reasonable verification. Hours spent in a SNAP Employment and Training program count toward the 80, and the state must offer a slot if it is going to count you as non-compliant for lacking one. Your state agency’s website (linked on each state page) has the current local rules; FNS’s page is the federal baseline.

Sources: Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, section 6(d) and 6(o), as amended by Public Law 119-21 (2025); USDA FNS, “SNAP Work Requirements,” updated July 16, 2026.