Food insecurity is “deepening in its severity” in the greater Washington, D.C., area in part due to the Trump Administration’s efforts to slash federal funding and employment, according to a new report.
The annual hunger report from the Capital Area Food Bank, which relies on data from nearly 4,000 residents in D.C. and the surrounding region, points to “the dramatic re-shaping of the government and its funding streams” as having “profound and widespread” economic impacts that it says are counteracting post-pandemic declines in unemployment and a strong GDP.
More than 820,000 people are facing food insecurity in the DMV area, according to the report, marking an increase of nearly 75,000 people a year since 2022. “We are back just about to where we were during the pandemic,” said LaMonika Jones, director of state initiatives at the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce hunger. “We’ve made several strides to improve food insecurity, to improve hunger, and poverty’s root causes. And in just a few short months, we’ve been able to undo all of the positive change.”
Billions of government dollars were invested towards social programs under the American Rescue Plan Act and other measures expanding aid during the pandemic, as many families found themselves unemployed or with reduced hours and struggled to make ends meet. Food insecurity subsequently fell to its lowest rate in decades in 2021, though it has risen again after the temporary expansions were cut.
President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has further reduced social spending: The bill cuts more than $180 billion from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding through 2035, affecting the approximately 41.7 million Americans who received SNAP benefits on a monthly basis, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The Department of Agriculture also announced on Saturday that it is terminating its annual food security survey, which will likely make tracking changes in food security nationwide more difficult. The agency referred to the report, which has been conducted for three decades, as “politicized” and “redundant,” claiming it does “nothing more than fear monger.”
Meanwhile, unemployment in the D.C. area has climbed as the Trump Administration has conducted mass layoffs of federal workers. Federal employment has declined by 97,000 since January, and the unemployment rate in D.C. stands at 6%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics—higher than the national average of 4.2%.
As of May 2025, 41% percent of households in the D.C. area with direct or indirect federal government employment that experienced a job loss reported being food insecure, the hunger report found—more than double the rate of food insecurity for households who did not face unemployment struggles. And around two-thirds of those households said they experienced “very low food security.”
Other broad factors are also contributing to a rise in food insecurity nationwide. High inflation, increased cost of living, slow wage growth, and “limited access to opportunity” have affected everyday American families, the report says. The prices of goods and services are about 20% higher than they were five years ago, and household income rates have not kept up with the rise.
These macro-level problems are being felt more acutely by those in the D.C. area, the report indicates, as 40% of adults in the region reported a decline in household finances. Households that had an average income of $98,000 in 2024 reported very low food security after the Trump Administration’s cuts to federal spending this year, per the report. More than half of those who were laid off within the past year said that they had low to no confidence in being able to find another job.
Jones points to a need to strengthen the broader set of systems on which people rely on a day-to-day basis. “[We must] support all of the social determinants of health that allow a person to take care of themselves in a way that they deem necessary: economic stability, transportation, affordable health care, affordable housing, child care,” she said.
“That also includes supply chain shortages and cost inflation when we’re going to the grocery store. When we don’t address the nuances that exist within a community or within a region, or we’re choosing not to understand the actual challenge and address it.”
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