More than 3 million people have lost access to the federal program designed to fight hunger and food insecurity less than a year after President Donald Trump’s signature reconciliation law made steep cuts to funding levels.

State and federal data compiled by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a center-left think tank, shows participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fell by about 8% between the bill’s enactment on July 4, 2025, and January of this year.

“We’re seeing historic drops in the number of people participating in SNAP, and we don’t know definitively, but all signs point to the fact that the mega-bill passed last year is making states make changes that make those programs less accessible,” Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research at CBPP’s Food Assistance team, said in an interview.

Between January 2025 and January 2026, federal data shows the number of SNAP participants fell in 47 states — all except Alaska, Hawaii and Kentucky. The steepest declines came in Arizona, where nearly 400,000 people were dropped from SNAP rolls, a decline of 43%; and in Georgia, where participation dropped 26%, or about 500,000 residents.

SNAP participation dropped by 5% or more in 36 states.

State-level data shows an even starker decline. Arizona has shed more than half its SNAP participants through the end of March. Participation in Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Montana has dropped by at least 10 percentage points.

Read more: Massachusetts task force: Shore up SNAP before federal cuts

Llobrera said the drop in participation is the steepest since 1997, when then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform legislation that caused a similar slump.

The last time participation in SNAP programs spiked, during the Great Recession, it took three years for SNAP programs to shed the number of participants who have been shut out in just the last six months.

This time, Trump’s reconciliation measure included both nearly $187 billion in funding cuts to SNAP programs and new eligibility requirements. The law requires adults without disabilities or dependents to meet work, education or volunteer requirements to qualify for the program. It also shifts additional administrative costs to states, based on how high a state’s error rate is.

A Trump administration spokeswoman said the law’s changes will help the program last long into the future.

“President Trump is strengthening SNAP for the Americans who need it by ensuring these programs are sustainable for future generations,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The Working Families Tax Cuts restores basic work requirements, prioritizes American citizens, and implements reasonable cost-sharing measures with states to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.

“The President was elected with a resounding mandate to eliminate runaway spending across the federal government — which includes ensuring that illegal aliens are not receiving benefits intended for American citizens.”

Read more: Latest SNAP funding disruption causes concern for Ohio urban service agencies

Llobrera said states are rushing to make changes to their administrative programs ahead of the January 2027 deadline set out in the bill. But those changes are “making it harder for people to access the program,” he said.

“Generally states, to improve their payment accuracy, are doing things like increasing verifications, both the volume and the frequency,” Llobrera said. “They’ve had virtually no time to get their processes, their staffing, their systems in order to bring down their error rates in a way that doesn’t harm people who are trying to access SNAP.”

Only a small handful of states — Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming — had error rates below the 6% threshold set out in the reconciliation bill, according to Fiscal Year 2024 data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. States with error rates higher than 6% will have to pay higher shares of SNAP administrative costs.

Llobrera estimates that by the time the reconciliation bill is fully implemented, as many as 4 million people will be booted from SNAP programs.

“These cuts to SNAP are going to result in millions of people losing food assistance,” he said. “These numbers sound big, but each and every individual there is someone who needs that food assistance to make ends meet and ensure they can stay healthy and thrive.”