Analysis

The Economic Consequences of Cutting SNAP


Washington D.C.–(ENEWSPF)–March 19, 2012. Today, as the nation anticipates the details of the House Republican’s budget blueprint, a new report from the Center for American Progress estimates the employment consequences that will result if the GOP decides to once again cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Under last year’s House budget proposal, SNAP, a program instrumental to combatting poverty in our country by alleviating hunger, was targeted for an 18 percent reduction. The report released today reveals that cuts to the SNAP program would not only take millions of meals off the table, but it would also result tens of thousands of job losses.

The analysis, entitled The Economic Consequences of Cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, finds that every $1 billion dollars spent by SNAP recipients enables nearly 14,000 Americans to find or keep their jobs. That means approximately 1 million workers were employed last year because of this program. If last year’s House budget proposal spearheaded by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) were enacted, the proposed ten year $127 billion cut to the program would have resulted in the loss of more than 174,000 jobs in the first year of cuts being enacted.

It is likely that that cuts to SNAP will be included again in this year’s House Budget Committee blueprint slated for release tomorrow morning. Even cuts of ten percent – half as large as proposed in last year’s budget plan – would result in a loss of 96,000 jobs. All economic sectors would be affected, but food-related industries would suffer disproportionately, losing nearly 11,400 jobs.

The study released today provides a tool to estimate the employment consequences that will result if cuts to SNAP are again proposed tomorrow. Key findings of the report include:

  • Each $1 billion reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eliminates 13,718 jobs.
     
  • A ten percent reduction in the size of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would cause more than 96,000 job losses.
     
  • These losses would be particularly strong in food-related industries, which would lose as many as 11,000 jobs under a 10 percent cut to the SNAP program.
     
  • Job losses will likely have the greatest impact on younger workers, since they account for a disproportionate share of workers in food-related industries; nearly one-third of grocery employees are under 25, compared to just 14 percent of workers in all industries.
     

Read the report:

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Source: americanprogress.org


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