SNAP Benefits Rise $18 a Month on Average, Work Rules Have Tightened
SNAP benefits rose an average of $18 a month on October 1, and work rules now cover adults up to age 64. The new amounts, who is affected and who to call.
Pennsylvania’s SNAP benefits rose on Thursday, October 1, by an average of $18 a month for most recipients. The same program now asks more of some adults than it did a year ago, and it costs the state more to run, so the changes are worth reading together.
Every October 1 the federal government adjusts SNAP for inflation, and the state Department of Human Services announced Pennsylvania’s amounts on September 29. For the year running through September 30, 2027, the maximum monthly benefit is $306 for one person, up from $298, and $1,023 for a family of four, up from $994, with $225 more for each additional person. Those are ceilings. Actual benefits depend on income, household size and expenses. The minimum benefit goes from $24 to $25, and according to the department no benefit goes down.
The gross monthly income limit is 200 percent of the federal poverty level: $2,660 for one person and $5,500 for a family of four.
Here is the part that came with last year’s federal law. Under H.R. 1, signed in July 2025, adults 18 to 64 who are able to work and have no child under 14 at home must work, or take part in a qualifying program, for at least 80 hours a month, and they must report it to the department. Those who do not can get SNAP for only three months in any three-year period. The age ceiling used to be 54, so adults from 55 to 64 are newly covered, and so are parents of children 14 and older. Veterans, homeless adults and young adults who aged out of foster care lost their automatic exemption.
Adults who are medically frail, or who have a child under 14 at home, are not covered, and the department lists other exemptions. It runs an online screener for anyone who is not sure where they stand. Since February 9, applicants also have to document their housing and utility costs instead of simply reporting them.
There is a bill attached for the state, too. As of this fiscal year, states pay 75 percent of SNAP’s administrative costs, up from 50 percent. Beginning in October 2027, states will also pay a share of the benefits themselves, based on how often they make payment errors. Pennsylvania’s error rate for federal fiscal 2025 was 9.2 percent, which would put its share at 10 percent of benefit costs. Estimates run from about $380 million to $410 million a year.
Fewer people are getting SNAP. The Altoona Mirror reported this summer that Pennsylvania had about 1.74 million recipients, down 11 percent from 1.96 million a year earlier, and cited stricter enforcement of the work rules, fewer waivers and narrower exemptions. Nationally, preliminary USDA figures show more than 37 million people received SNAP in March, nearly 5 million fewer than a year before.
Somerset County is not a small player in this program. The most recent county figure in Census Bureau data, from 2023, counts 10,871 people receiving SNAP here, up from 10,722 the year before. That count predates the work rules. Kris Mamula reported in April that Ben Tawney, who runs the Somerset County Mobile Food Bank near Bakersville, was seeing demand inch up as food and fuel costs climbed.
Eighteen dollars a month is $216 a year. For a household that heats with oil, one 275-gallon fill at the late September price of $5.70 a gallon is about $1,570. The increase is real, and it is also a long way from covering the winter.
The Confluence Turkeyfoot Food Pantry served 103 families in September and has three distributions left this year, on October 9, November 13 and December 11. That last date is also when the federal stopgap spending law runs out, the one that keeps SNAP and the pantry boxes funded through December 11 unless Congress acts first.
To apply, check a case or report work hours, go to www.dhs.pa.gov/COMPASS, use the myCOMPASS PA app, or call 1-877-395-8930. The department’s line for questions about the federal changes is 1-877-883-6383, and www.dhs.pa.gov/work explains the work rules.
If you know someone in their late fifties or early sixties who gets by on SNAP and does not say much about it, it is worth asking whether they have heard about the reporting rule. The helpline call is free, and it is a lot easier to ask before the third month than after.