What it is
The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, a government statistics office with no commercial interest in the result.
The chart in the Economic Research Service gallery tracks average monthly SNAP participation and federal spending from fiscal 2000 to 2024. In fiscal 2024 participation averaged 41.7 million people a month, down from the previous year, and federal spending totaled 99.8 billion dollars, also down, in inflation-adjusted terms.
It is a participation and spending series only. It gives no share of the population, no benefit per person, and nothing about where or how those households shop.
What the commerce leader should take from it
- One American in eight is in a SNAP household in a typical month. A grocer whose online checkout cannot take the EBT card has excluded that household from the channel.
- A hundred billion dollars a year of grocery spending arrives on one card. Where it can be spent online decides who gets it.
- The series says nothing about shopping behavior. The online share of SNAP households is the retailer’s own number to find.
Where to start
Finding 2.2 uses it for the size of the population a grocer leaves out when EBT stops at the register. Accept EBT online for pickup in every SNAP-eligible store before the next fiscal year, and watch the share of online orders paid with EBT against those households’ in-store share.
Keep in mind
Participation and spending only, with no population share, no benefit level and nothing about how the households shop.