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Learn about new laws that are causing significant changes in time-limited work rules for SNAP recipients and that impact recipients and increase workload for Minnesota's counties and Tribal Nations.

Title

SNAP Food Assistance in Minnesota

Intro

Food Data Dashboard

Minnesota helps people get the food they need for healthy meals by providing monthly benefits to low-income households. Most of the benefits are issued through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) either as a stand-alone benefit, or a food benefit combined with cash for families with dependent children through the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP).  The state also provides some funding for food benefits to people who are not eligible for the federal program.

This dashboard provides information on the number of households receiving those benefits and the total amount of benefits provided on a state and county level, by funding source. The dashboard covers a baseline period between the great recession and the pandemic, the program’s response to the COVID19 pandemic when policy changes expanded eligibility and increased allotment amounts, as well as the return of more restrictive policies following the pandemic.

Federal changes to SNAP signed into law on July 4, 2025 will reduce the number of Minnesotans who can receive SNAP and require the state to pay for a larger portion of program administration. Beginning in federal fiscal year 2028 (October 1, 2027), non-federal funds will be expected to cover a portion of benefit costs for the first time in the program’s history. The amount of the non-federal contribution will be tied to the state’s SNAP payment error rate.

Additional information on the characteristics of people who receive food assistance in Minnesota can be found on our Research, Reports and Evaluation page. Details on how recent changes to federal law will reduce SNAP benefits can be found here.

For questions about the dashboard, please contact: reportsandforecasts.dcyf@state.mn.us

Widgets

The SNAP Food Assistance Data Dashboard is hosted on Tableau Public©. A Microsoft Excel version of the data is also available. 

Data notes

  • The source of the data in this dashboard is the statewide eligibility and payment system, MAXIS.
  • Small variations in the total food assistance amounts and case or person counts are possible between the SNAP Statewide and County Statistics spreadsheets and the dashboard. This is due to the timing of when the data are pulled and minor changes to cancels and adjustments.
  • A case is any group of people individually enrolled in food assistance, live together, and purchase and prepare food together. A case may have ineligible household members not included in a grant or may have individuals receiving food assistance through different grant programs. For example, a case may include one individual receiving stand-alone SNAP, and another family member receiving the food portion of MFIP.
  • The average monthly amount of food assistance provided to Minnesotans, and the number of Minnesotans receiving food assistance, increased in the years following the declaration of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. From April 2020 through February 2023, households received an additional monthly supplement to their food benefits (E-SNAP). Additionally, other temporary changes to the SNAP certification process, and the suspension or waiver of mandatory work requirements for time-limited recipients from April 2020 through July 2023, increased caseloads for 2020-2023. The data in this dashboard includes these E-SNAP amounts. It does not include data for Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT), the temporary food assistance program for households with children affected by school closures during the public health emergency.
  • Three Tribal Nations that share geography with Minnesota administer SNAP. Tribal members who are not part of the three Tribal Nations’ service areas and receive SNAP are served by their county of residence.
  • Some counties deliver human services as a consortium of counties. Many are still defined as individual counties in the underlying data and are presented this way in the dashboard. Counties that are part of a consortium that have combined their data are shown as one county.
  • The benefit amounts in the dashboard are based on accounting month, meaning the money, cases and people are counted in the month funds are paid. Other data on the DCYF public web are eligibility based, meaning the money, cases and people are counted in the month the household is eligible, even if the funds were not paid in that same month. In a majority of cases, the accounting month and eligibility month are the same. Differences occur when a household applies in one month but the determination of eligibility is not made until the following month.
  • Accounting month considers canceled payments and removes those from the totals. Eligibility month analyses typically do not account for payments that are later canceled and instead focus on the amounts households were determined eligible to receive.

For questions about the dashboard, please contact: reportsandforecasts.dcyf@state.mn.us