The pandemic affected food access and affordability in American households, and the trend still lingers. The Agriculture Department has some measures to support struggling households, but one out of every eight adults is struggling to afford enough food.

• As of October 2023, 12.5% of American adults (nearly 28 million people) are living in homes where there is sometimes or often not enough to eat — the highest number since 2020.
  
  

• In October 2023, 3.0% of American adults said they often did not have enough to eat. Another 9.5% sometimes lacked enough food. As for food satisfaction, 33.8% of American adults reported having enough food but not always the types they wanted, while 53.7% reported food security with access to the kinds of food they wanted all the time.
  
  

• According to the Household Pulse Survey, 76.8% of adults with limited food access were not eating enough because they couldn’t afford to.
  
  

• SNAP participation rose from 37.1 million in January 2020 to 41.4 million in October 2023. However, additional pandemic support for SNAP ended in March of last year. The average monthly value that SNAP enrollees received dropped 28% from $246 to $177 between February and April 2023. The monthly average remains higher than it was before the pandemic.

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