When Making a Living No Longer Covers the Cost of Living:
U.S. Hunger
November 12, 2025
U.S. Hunger’s data reveal the rise of the newly vulnerable — Working, Insured Americans Now Living One Missed Paycheck Away from Instability.
As Washington continues its debate over how best to support American families, both sides voice genuine concern for those most affected. But while policymakers speak on behalf of these households, their voices are rarely captured at scale — and too often missing from the conversation.
The effects of the federal shutdown are visible everywhere: weekly announcements of federal-worker and contractor layoffs, delayed disbursements, and growing uncertainty among the most vulnerable — seniors, mothers with infants, and lower-wage earners. As of late October 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been operating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program under temporary contingency funding, warning that if the shutdown extends, state agencies could face funding gaps within weeks.
This article does not take sides; it amplifies the voices of working Americans — those often spoken about but rarely included in the discussion. By sharing early observations from U.S. Hunger (USH), we aim to inform policymakers, community partners, and donors about the compound pressures facing these households so that future responses to benefit disruptions can be more anticipatory than reactive.lly who is impacted by it and why it occurs.
A Real-Time Window Into Instability
Through USH’s Full Cart program — a virtual food delivery model that also captures real-time data on the lived experiences of applicants —the signs of strain are both clear and surprising. While the looming interruption of SNAP and WIC benefits has understandably sparked new needs, what stands out is that many of the households turning to us are not traditional long-term recipients
According to U.S. Hunger’s internal analysis of 148,067 Full Cart applications collected between January 2023 and October 2025, roughly 69 percent reported employment and 88 percent reported having health insurance. Of those insured, nearly one-third (32 percent) held private or employer-sponsored plans.
This pattern reveals a layered crisis — one pressure point from disrupted funding, another from missed pay cycles, furloughs, and delayed contractor wages. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that approximately 750,000 federal employees were furloughed during the 2025 shutdown, while thousands more continued working without pay. And as the Bipartisan Policy Center reports, federal contractors and support staff across multiple sectors also missed paychecks, compounding financial stress for households already stretched thin.
Stories That Reveal the Shift: Voices Unpacked
The convergence of benefit delays and income interruptions has created a community of “newly vulnerable” Americans. Full Cart sees their stories in real time.
Through U.S. Hunger’s upcoming storytelling platform, Voices: Unpacked, we are sharing the real stories of Full Cart applicants to deepen public understanding of the lived experiences behind every data point. Through this lens, every application becomes more than a request for food; it becomes insight into the shifting realities of work, health, and household stability.
One applicant from the Mid-Atlantic region — a single parent and federal contractor — shared that her refrigerator was nearly empty after missing a second paycheck and seeing her SNAP balance frozen.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the SNAP program served an average of 41.7 million people per month in Fiscal Year 2024, representing 12.3 percent of U.S. residents. This dual stress on benefits and earnings underscores the surge in food-assistance requests that USH has observed. Because Full Cart operates nationally through a virtual, dignity-based assistance model, it provides a real-time view of household stress that often precedes official statistics.
A Temporary Fix — and a Deeper Truth
Partial relief arrived on November 4 when federal courts ordered the continuation of SNAP and WIC payments, but the fix is temporary. The administration announced that only partial benefits would be distributed, with full funding dependent on the government’s reopening, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
For millions of families, uncertainty remains the daily reality. At U.S. Hunger, our team views this moment not as the failure of a single program but as a mirror reflecting a larger truth: food insecurity is no longer confined to the unemployed or uninsured. It now includes millions of working, insured Americans living close enough to the financial edge that one missed paycheck or delayed benefit can tip them into crisis. Our data show this shift unfolding across the country — the emergence of what we call the newly vulnerable.
The Rise of the Newly Vulnerable
If the shutdown has taught us anything, it’s that the line between stability and insecurity is thinner than many realize. As shown in Figure 1 below, these trends illustrate how the share of working and insured applicants has risen steadily since 2020.
Defining the Shift
According to U.S. Hunger’s internal analysis of Full Cart application data, the program has logged 272,434 applicants since 2020, including 148,067 since 2023, when comprehensive health-related social-needs tracking began. Among those reporting employment status during 2023–2025, 69 percent were working, and 88 percent reported having health insurance. Of those insured, nearly one-third (32 percent) held private or employer-sponsored plans.
Preliminary data from October 2025 show this trend accelerating, with roughly 72 percent of respondents employed, 90 percent insured, and one-third (33 percent) covered through private or employer insurance — illustrating how the current SNAP/WIC shock pushed even more working Americans to seek help discreetly.
These data mark a clear and continuing departure from the traditional profile of food-aid recipients. Today’s applicants — many of whom are employed and insured — lack the financial cushion to weather temporary shocks. They occupy a fiscal middle ground — earning enough to avoid long-term dependence but too little to absorb short-term disruptions.
Economic & Social Context
This transformation reflects broader economic headwinds. Research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Harvard University Joint Center For Housing Studies shows that wages for middle-income workers have grown only modestly while costs for housing, childcare, and healthcare have outpaced income gains. For millions, a single unplanned expense — a car repair, a medical bill, or a utility spike — can trigger the same instability once caused by a lost job.
The current SNAP/WIC disruption magnifies that fragility but did not create it. Shutdowns and benefit delays simply reveal the precariousness that already existed, redirecting public attention toward a symptom rather than the systemic cause.
Behavioral Signals in the Data
During October 2025, applicant narratives changed sharply. Mentions of “SNAP,” “benefit delay,” “missed paycheck,” and “never needed help before” surged — a 50 percent rise in total stories and a 160 percent jump in SNAP mentions from September to October.
These shifts show that many applicants are experiencing acute, situational food insecurity rather than chronic poverty. Lacking savings, they turn to Full Cart’s virtual model for discreet, rapid relief.
These waves leave aftershocks that last for months — and with the holidays through early spring already our busiest season, the October surge is likely to stretch well into the new year. For community-based organizations like U.S. Hunger, these overlapping surges expose a familiar paradox — the moments when need swells most are rarely the moments when resources increase to match it.
Why This Matters Nationally
The rise of this “newly vulnerable” population challenges long-held assumptions about hunger. National metrics focus largely on chronic unemployment and poverty lines, overlooking households that appear stable on paper. Because these families are employed, insured, and often hesitant to seek public aid, they remain largely invisible in official counts and program design.
By capturing real-time, first-hand narratives and linking them to standardized health-related social-need codes (ICD-10 Z-codes), U.S. Hunger transforms lived stories into actionable data — building one of the nation’s only datasets that track food insecurity among working, insured Americans at scale.
The Full Cart Context
A Mission Built to See Instability Differently
When U.S. Hunger launched Full Cart in 2019, the goal wasn’t to replace local food banks but to function as a mirror — revealing where and how need is shifting before official data catches up. From the start, demand far exceeded capacity — a reality shared by most community-based food organizations. Since its launch, Full Cart has quietly connected hundreds of thousands of households across the country, revealing how quickly need can surface even in working communities. The program’s digital design provides something few others could: visibility into where need exists and how quickly it changes.
Even without marketing or active recruitment, families found the platform — many of them working, insured, and seeking temporary relief with discretion and dignity. That experience made one truth clear: hunger is not just a social issue but a health issue. Research published in Health Affairs Scholar estimates that roughly 80 percent of what determines health outcomes lies outside clinical care — in social, economic, and environmental conditions.
Building the Bridge Between Food and Health
As Full Cart’s data revealed that nearly nine out of ten applicants were insured, collaboration with the healthcare sector became the natural next step. Health plans and providers are increasingly recognizing that food insecurity is a determinant of health outcomes — and U.S. Hunger’s firsthand data can give them a way to understand and respond at scale.
To act on that insight responsibly, U.S. Hunger has focused on partnerships that strengthen the connection between food and health while protecting data integrity and community trust.
Catalytic Social Impact Investments
JPMorgan Chase’s Technology for Good program helped U.S. Hunger harness artificial intelligence ethically — transforming community stories into actionable intelligence rather than marketing. This collaboration centers on converting lived experience into data that partners can use to address root causes of hunger. View JPMorgan Chase’s public profile of this work.
Soon after, Sara Lee Brands made a multi-year social impact investment directly into data analytics and research focused on caregivers and food insecurity. This partnership produced Empty Tables: The Hidden Reality of Food Insecurity — revealing how caregiving responsibilities intersect with hunger and reframing national dialogue on the lived realities of food insecurity in America.
Support from The Kroger Foundation then fueled U.S. Hunger’s progress toward full HIPAA-, FDR-, and HITRUST compliance — standards that allow community organizations to work safely with health plans and manage sensitive member information. (In plain terms, these certifications mean U.S. Hunger now meets the same privacy and data-security requirements as healthcare entities, enabling compliant collaboration.)
This investment does more than strengthen compliance; it positions community-based organizations as trusted entry points into the healthcare continuum. By enabling secure data exchange, it transforms local nonprofits from outsourced referral partners into direct engagement solutions — embedding the power of community trust within the infrastructure of care.
Most recently, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided the capacity, cost-efficiency, and interoperability needed to integrate and scale this impact for years to come. Through AWS’s secure cloud and AI for Good initiatives, U.S. Hunger can manage confidential data responsibly while expanding analytical reach to more communities.
Together, these social impact investments demonstrate how collaboration across sectors can reshape the tools, technology, and evidence base needed to confront food and nutritional insecurity — not by expanding distribution alone, but by transforming insight into coordinated action.
Through programs like Hunger Projects, which have mobilized millions of volunteers to pack and distribute meals globally, and Full Cart, which delivers groceries directly to households across the U.S., U.S. Hunger connects immediate relief to long-term understanding. The same data infrastructure that captures real-time household need also fuels advocacy and systems change, helping partners design policies and programs that address the root causes of hunger rather than its symptoms.
Why This Lens Matters Now
While U.S. Hunger continues to face the same capacity limits as other food-relief networks, its evolving digital infrastructure now enables real-time insight into the intersection of food and health. Full Cart is not a marketing channel; it is a mirror showing how food insecurity evolves in a modern economy — and why collaboration across sectors is essential for durable solutions.
These social impact investments spanning technology, research, compliance, and cloud infrastructure have done more than modernize operations. They’ve revealed what the data has been showing all along: that food insecurity in America is no longer defined by unemployment or poverty alone. It now includes a growing share of working, insured households living close to the financial edge. This reality became unmistakable during the recent SNAP/WIC disruption, marking the rise of the newly vulnerable.
Behind every data point are people — and their stories bring the numbers into focus.
The Working Providers
Voices from the Field
Behind the data are everyday Americans working hard to hold their families together. They are parents, caregivers, contractors, and hourly workers who measure every decision against the rising cost of food, housing, and childcare. They are not waiting for rescue — they are figuring it out, one bill, one paycheck, one grocery trip at a time.
A mother in the Gulf Coast region described how she had always been the one helping others, but this fall she found herself at a breaking point:
“I work full-time, and my husband does too. But we’ve had to choose between daycare and groceries. I’ve never asked for help before. This is temporary, but it’s still hard to say out loud.”
Her words echo those of nearly seven in ten applicants to Full Cart this fall who reported being employed. For many, the crisis wasn’t about losing work — it was about losing ground.
In Maryland, a federal contractor explained that the shutdown’s ripple effects left her family suddenly exposed:
“My paychecks stopped, but the bills didn’t. We thought we had a buffer, but one missed check became two. I’m not looking for a handout — I’m just trying to get back to even.”
Her story mirrors hundreds of narratives submitted in October that mention the words “missed paycheck” or “waiting on benefits.”
A father of two in rural Ohio shared how he’s juggling multiple roles:
“I work days and drive deliveries at night. We have insurance, but the copays and groceries keep going up. My kids eat before I do — that’s how we make it work.”
He represents a growing portion of the “working insured” — families that look stable on paper but live one expense away from instability.
A grandmother in Texas caring for her two grandsons wrote that she applied for assistance only after her power bill doubled:
“I told myself I could stretch what I had, but then my SNAP benefits were delayed. I’ve raised three generations, and I’m not about to quit now. I just needed a little help to keep the lights on and food on the table.”
Her resilience underscores what U.S. Hunger has always seen: moments of asking for help are rarely about dependency — they are about persistence.
Resilience, Not Reliance
These stories are not about despair. They are stories of perseverance — of people who are working, insured, and providing, yet facing a cost of living that continues to outpace the act of making a living. Their resilience speaks to a broader truth: the safety nets built for yesterday’s challenges are straining under today’s realities.
Every application is a story of someone still trying — still showing up for their family, their community, and themselves. And within that perseverance lies the quiet heroism of a nation doing its best to make ends meet in an economy that no longer guarantees stability.
Their experiences don’t just reveal hardship; they illuminate the strength, ingenuity, and grit that policymakers and systems must learn from if we’re to build responses worthy of the people they’re meant to serve.
The question now isn’t whether the need exists — it’s how systems of policy, health, and community can adapt to meet it with the same determination that these families show every day.
Policy and Program Implications
Redefining the Problem
The stories from this fall are not about hunger alone. They are about the fragile balance between work, cost, and access that defines life for millions of Americans. Hunger is the symptom. The root cause lies in economic fragility and system gaps across the social determinants of health — transportation, childcare, housing, and healthcare costs that outpace income growth. When those systems falter, food becomes the first visible casualty.
Data from U.S. Hunger’s Full Cart program make this clear: nearly 92 percent of applicants report managing two to five overlapping gaps — most often a combination of housing, income, utilities, and food insecurity — and nearly two-thirds face three to five simultaneous challenges. These families are not defined by a single unmet need but by a stack of small, compounding shortfalls that together erode stability.
The lesson from this moment is that we cannot feed our way out of fragility. Traditional hunger interventions address the what; the why demands a broader view — one that treats household stability as an ecosystem of interconnected pressures rather than a single unmet need.
What the Shutdown Revealed
The recent SNAP/WIC disruption exposed how narrowly programs define vulnerability. Current benefit systems react to unemployment and poverty thresholds but rarely account for the volatility of modern work — hourly schedules, gig income, and delayed contractor pay.
Households that appear stable on paper can experience crisis within weeks.
Policy built on static definitions misses those living in motion.
Real-time data collection, like that used in Full Cart’s virtual home-delivery model, shows how rapidly need changes and how slowly traditional systems see it. Future policy must build this kind of visibility into its design.
Building a Smarter Safety Net
Short-term improvements are straightforward: automatic contingency funding during shutdowns, faster state communication on benefit delays, and simplified cross-program enrollment for families already identified as at risk
Long-term resilience requires deeper integration.
- Data interoperability: food, health, and social-service data must talk to each other securely.
- Predictive analytics: early-warning systems that flag rising costs or regional instability before households fall behind.
- Adaptive benefits: models that flex with income volatility rather than reset eligibility every few months.
These changes would allow policy to move from reaction to prevention — matching the real pace of household economics.
Cross-Sector Collaboration as Infrastructure
Health outcomes are shaped far more by life conditions than clinical care — roughly 80 percent, according to Health Affairs Scholar.
That makes hunger response a health imperative, not just a humanitarian one.
Partnerships among health plans, employers, and community organizations can turn social-care data into early interventions. The same interoperability that protects patient data can help ensure families never reach the point of crisis.
The infrastructure that U.S. Hunger and its supporters have built — cloud capacity, compliance, analytics — illustrates what this could look like nationally: a network that sees fragility forming and acts before families run out of options.
Reimagining the Response
The future of food security will not be built on distribution alone but on integration — linking social-care systems, health networks, and economic policy so that the next crisis is visible before it arrives. That means measuring success not only by the meals we deliver today, but also by the stability we help restore for tomorrow.
Through this lens, we’ve begun Voices: Unpacked — not a campaign, but a commitment to unpack stories that reveal how hunger, health, and hope intersect in real time. It is where every surge in need becomes a lesson, and every story becomes a signal guiding a smarter, more dignified response.
The families who reached out to U.S. Hunger this fall were not waiting for charity; they were navigating complexity. Their experiences reveal that the health of a nation depends less on what people eat than on whether their work provides enough to live where and how they do.
If policy, healthcare, and community systems can adapt with the same resilience these households show every day, then the next shutdown — or any economic shock — won’t leave families invisible until they are hungry. It will be met with foresight, coordination, and dignity.
“Hunger is not the failure to find food — it’s the signal that the cost of living has outpaced the act of making a living.”
By Rick Whitted, CEO – U.S. Hunger
To learn more about U.S. Hunger or to support its work, visit voicesunpacked.org
U.S. Department of Agriculture. “USDA Contingency Plan for Operations During a Lapse in Appropriations.” Updated October 2025.
U.S. Hunger (USH). Internal analysis of applicant data from the Full Cart program, covering January 2023 – October 2025 (n = 148,067). Data are self-reported by applicants via intake forms and verified for de-identification before analysis.
Congressional Budget Office. “Effects of a Federal Government Shutdown on Operations and Personnel.” Washington, DC: CBO, October 2025.
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/30/government-shutdown-federal-workers-pay-furloughs
Partnership for Public Service / Bipartisan Policy Center. “Who Is Missing Paychecks in the 2025 Shutdown — When and Where?” September 2025.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/who-is-missing-paychecks-in-the-2025-shutdown-when-and-where
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. “Percent of Population Receiving SNAP Benefits, FY 2024.” Updated July 2025.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detail?chartId=55416
U.S. Department of Agriculture and multiple news sources. “Administration to Partially Resume SNAP and WIC Payments Following Court Order.” November 4, 2025.
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases
U.S. Hunger (USH). Internal analysis of Full Cart applicant data (2020–Oct 2025), self-reported employment and insurance status verified for de-identification before analysis.
Source: U.S. Hunger (USH) Full Cart Program, Internal Analysis 2020–Oct 2025.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Real Earnings Summary, Q3 2025.” Washington, D.C., October 2025.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.toc.htm
Pew Research Center. “Middle-Income Americans and the Cost of Living Squeeze.” August 2025.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/high-housing-costs-are-consuming-household-incomes
Health Affairs Scholar. “Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity in America.” 2024. Available at
https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article/2/12/qxae151/7900047