State Estimates For Work Requirements Will Cost More Than Providing SNAP Benefits
Dustin Hare | December 12, 2025
This year, we’ve covered how SNAP work requirements will harm struggling Kansans. To add to our concerns about those impacts, a new cost estimate from the state shows the cost to administer the work requirements for 800 Kansans who are newly subject to them will cost more than the SNAP benefits they receive.
A recent budget hearing revealed the Department for Children and Families (DCF) submitted a request for $2.4 million to handle the increased caseloads to the SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) Program based on the federal changes made by the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (H.R. 1) passed by Congress in July.
DCF estimates 800 Kansans will be newly enrolled in the E&T Program due to H.R. 1. This is the result of the extension of SNAP work requirements to several new populations. To learn more about who will be affected and how to comply with the requirements, read our recent explainer.
According to DCF’s budget request, an additional $2.1 million is needed to hire approximately 32 full-time employees as Career Navigators. The remaining $300,000 they’re requesting would be made available to program participants to cover costs of training and other materials needed to overcome barriers to employment.
Doing the math, administering the work requirements will cost Kansas an average of $250 per person per month, or $3,000 per person per year. In comparison, the average Kansas SNAP recipient receives $178 per month in federal food assistance, or $2,136 per year.
For these 800 Kansans, the total annual amount of federal funding they receive is about $1.7 million, considerably less than the $2.1 million it will cost to police them.
Also important to note, the $2.1 million needed to administer work requirements must be funded using state dollars, whereas the $1.75 million in benefits are funded by the federal government.
Many in favor of work requirements state their goal is to reduce government waste, but the results are quite clear: work requirements are the very definition of government waste. They do not increase employment or self-sufficiency, they take much-needed assistance away from people who are not able to work, and they also cost taxpayers a lot of money.
This is just another in a long line of examples of how work reporting requirements don’t work in the real world.
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