- SNAP benefits will be restored for over 40 million Americans following the end of the 43-day government shutdown.
- The USDA expects most recipients to receive their benefits within 24 hours, but payment timing depends on individual states.
- As of May 2025, 1.45 million Ohioans received SNAP benefits, with an average monthly amount of $186.02 per person.
The 43-day government shutdown, the longest in history, finally ended on Nov. 12. When November began, over 40 million Americans, including 1.45 million Ohioans, experienced uncertainty about their SNAP benefits.
What will happen to SNAP benefits now that the government has reopened? Will SNAP recipients receive their November benefits after the government shutdown ended? When will benefits be paid out? Here’s what we know.
How many Ohio SNAP recipients receive their benefits when the government shutdown ended?
When the latest spending package was signed on Wednesday, Nov. 12, by President Donald Trump, the government shutdown officially came to an end. This will restore full funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but some recipients may still have to wait to receive their benefits as payments depend on how states handle funds after they are released by the USDA. The USDA told USA TODAY that SNAP recipients should receive their benefits within 24 hours in most states.
In Ohio, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services began sending partial payments on Nov. 12, according to the Columbus Dispatch. As of that day, the agency had issued $66.8 million to 364,000 households.
The 41.7 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (sometimes called food stamps) will receive their benefits now that the shutdown has ended.
What happened with SNAP during the government shutdown?
Before the shutdown lifted, various states and the USDA were looking for other ways to distribute SNAP benefits to hungry families.
On Sept. 30, the USDA announced a detailed plan to use contingency funds for SNAP recipients, but later deleted it after they said they couldn’t use the roughly $6 billion of contingency funds to pay for SNAP.
Later, 25 states filed lawsuits in an attempt to force Trump to fund November SNAP benefits. Courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that withholding SNAP funds was unlawful and urged the USDA to pay them.
The Trump Administration agreed to these terms, but the funding continued to stall until the government shutdown ended. This included the administration’s announcement that it could only provide partial SNAP funding by Nov. 7, but filed a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court to block it, according to USA TODAY.
How many Ohioans get SNAP benefits?
As of May 2025, 1.45 million Ohioans received SNAP benefits each month, according to state-level data from the USDA. That represents a 3.5% increase from May 2024, when 1.40 million Ohioans received SNAP benefits, and a slight rise from 1.44 million recipients in April 2025.
According to USDA data, 1.42 million people in Ohio received SNAP benefits in 2022. Nearly 740,000 Ohio households received SNAP benefits in 2022, according to the USDA, and 79% of Ohio households receiving SNAP benefits had income at or below the poverty line, according to the USDA.
Ohio SNAP benefits by the numbers
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities collected SNAP data in 2024. Here’s what it found:
- 35% of Ohio SNAP households are working families
- 1 in 9 Ohio households benefit from SNAP
- 62% of Ohio SNAP households have children
- 43% of Ohio SNAP households have older or disabled members
What is the average monthly SNAP benefit per person in Ohio?
In May 2025, the USDA paid $269.9 million in SNAP benefits for Ohio recipients. The average benefit amount was $186.02, an increase from $159 per person in 2022 according to USDA figures.
The 2022 USDA data shows that every $1 of SNAP benefits can lead to a $1.54 increase in gross domestic product.
