Alaska and North Dakota were the only two states where food stamp enrollment rose between June 2025 and June 2026, according to USDA’s state-by-state SNAP participation table. Every other state, the District of Columbia and every territory listed in the table recorded fewer people receiving benefits in June 2026 than a year earlier.
The pattern sits inside the same data run that shows the national SNAP caseload falling by more than five million people over the same twelve months. USDA marks the June 2026 column in the state table as initial, meaning both exceptions and every other state’s decline could still move before the agency finalizes the data.
Alaska and North Dakota: the two exceptions
Alaska’s SNAP participation grew from 66,572 people in June 2025 to 70,043 in June 2026, a gain of about 5.2 percent, according to USDA’s state-level persons table. North Dakota’s count rose from 51,179 to 52,904 over the same period, an increase of about 3.4 percent. Those are the only two entries in the fifty-state, D.C. and territory table with a higher June 2026 figure than June 2025.
What a rising or falling state count leaves open: Whether a household’s case moves onto or off SNAP in a given state, the paperwork that keeps it active works the same way regardless of which direction the state’s total is moving. The renewal and reporting calendar in The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer tracks when that paperwork comes due.
The size of the declines everywhere else
The same table’s other rows move in the opposite direction, some by large margins. Texas fell from 3,457,259 people in June 2025 to 2,810,903 in June 2026, a decline of 646,356, and Georgia’s count dropped from 1,320,870 in May 2026 alone to 1,196,489 the following month. Neither state is unusual in direction, only in scale, since every state outside Alaska and North Dakota shows a lower June 2026 total than a year before.
What “initial” means on this table
USDA’s state-level table labels the June 2026 column “Initial,” while the separate national monthly table calls the same month “preliminary.” Both labels carry the same practical meaning: the agency expects revisions once every state finishes reporting its caseload, and the same initial column is what shows Alaska and North Dakota moving against the national direction.
In raw numbers, the two increases are modest. Alaska’s SNAP participation grew by 3,471 people over the year, and North Dakota’s grew by 1,725. Both gains are far smaller in absolute terms than the declines of hundreds of thousands of people recorded in larger states such as Texas and Georgia, even though Alaska and North Dakota move in the opposite direction on the same table.
The agency’s SNAP data page, updated September 18, 2026, lists the state table beside the national figures and offers no state-by-state explanation for why Alaska and North Dakota moved against the broader trend.
How today’s total compares with last year’s average
The same national monthly table used to calculate the 12.8 percent year-over-year change also lists a fiscal year 2025 monthly average of 42,145,499 people and 22,581,486 households nationwide. June 2026’s 36,352,716 people is nearly 5.8 million below that full-year average, one more way of showing how far the state-by-state declines have pulled the national total down over the past twelve months.
Alaska and North Dakota’s growth does not change that picture by much. Together the two states added fewer than 5,200 people to their combined SNAP rolls over the year, a small fraction of the more than five million people the national count lost across the same period.
A national decline built from fifty different state stories
Nationally, USDA’s separate monthly table shows people receiving SNAP falling from 41,678,341 in June 2025 to 36,352,716 in June 2026, a drop of 5,325,625, or about 12.8 percent. That national figure is the sum of movement in every state and territory, so a decline nearly everywhere, offset only by growth in Alaska and North Dakota, is what produces it.
The next update to the Food and Nutrition Administration’s state table, posted at the same page as the national figures, will show whether Alaska and North Dakota keep growing once June’s numbers are finalized, or whether the two states join the rest of the country’s direction instead.
Renewal paperwork works the same in every state’s count
USDA’s state table shows enrollment moving in different directions across the country, but it does not show which households in any state are approaching their own recertification date. The unfinished task, in a rising state or a falling one, is tracking that date before a case lapses.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer includes 51 state packs and a renewal document checklist for confirming what a state expects at recertification.
Compare state renewal requirements in The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources.
