Hospitality industry leaders need to act now to support its workers during the government shutdown. This is especially important due to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits program disruption. This needs to be the top issue every leadership team in the hospitality industry team is focusing on today. Thousands of hospitality and food service workers are facing immediate food insecurity and missed meals. The hospitality industry depends on these workers to deliver America’s service experience, yet we have left them in a dangerous position during this crisis. Congress must ensure SNAP continuity to protect both the workers and the industries that rely on them but until that happens, industry must take charge.
Because many hospitality workers rely on SNAP, a government shutdown that interrupts these benefits increases the risk of food insecurity, financial hardship and stress. A stressed workforce is less productive, leads to higher absenteeism, turnover and lower morale. These issues will directly impact the service-oriented hospitality business, where guest experience and staff stability are essential. By supporting employees through the 2025 SNAP benefit disruption, we can mitigate the risk of workforce disruption. Beyond philanthropy, there is a strong business case for doing so. We must maintain a stable workforce during challenging times to protect operational continuity, preserve service quality and reduce the costs associated with frequent rehiring and training. Our industry is still feeling the impacts from the Great Recession and helping employees though the loss of access to SNAP is essential.
We know when SNAP benefits are disrupted during a shutdown, workers in low wage sectors, like the hospitality and tourism industry, will face immediate drops in household consumption, increasing financial stress and food insecurity. SNAP delays or disruptions reduce household consumption for low-wage employees. In 2023, a study by the Institute of Labor Economics examined the 2018-19 U.S. federal government shutdown and how it changed the timing of SNAP disbursements. This study found that households eligible for SNAP significantly reduced their expenditures when there was a longer than normal gap between benefit payments. Specifically, they estimated an approximate 5.9% drop in total expenditures in a month with an unexpected early double payment followed by a gap (Marks, Prina & Gernhardt, 2023).
This is important because employees in the hospitality industry are likely to rely on SNAP or be in a low wage role. The GAO report “Federal Social Safety Net Programs: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely On Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs” showed that about 72% of wage earning adult SNAP recipients in 2018 worked in one of five industries with high concentrations of low-wage jobs (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2020). Not surprisingly among those industries were “food preparation and serving” jobs which include many hospitality and food-service roles. Another report from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that about 13–16% of SNAP participants work in the leisure and hospitality sector (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2021). When you combine with this another study on food service workers that found they are “about 2.5 times more likely to face food insecurity than workers in other sectors of the economy,” the implications are underscored (Nation of Change, 2024). Many hospitality industry workers are at a disproportionately high risk for food insecurity.
The SNAP shut down will also have rolling repercussions for the hospitality business. If hospitality workers are financially stressed (SNAP benefit interruptions certainly qualify as stressful) that stress can translate into lower engagement and higher turnover. Both are costly for employers in a sector already challenged by staffing shortages. Earlier this year, The Darden School of Business wrote an article that employees impacted by a government shutdown experience a morale shock equivalent to approximately a 10% salary cut (Darden School of Business, 2025). While that research was about federal workers, the cause can map to any workforce facing financial uncertainty.
What should hospitality leaders be doing? Provide information or transitional assistance, keep communication open, offer any bridging aid available, find areas you can offer stability and open any existing internal resources. Evidence that SNAP benefit interruptions cause immediate drops in household consumption underscores the urgency of proactive action. Employers that respond early can better protect both their employees’ wellbeing and their own organizational resilience. Not every business is the same and the tactics that will best benefit employees will vary by each employer. But it is critical to find the tactics that will best support your workforce and implement them as quickly as possible. Protecting the people who feed and serve our nation should be a bipartisan priority because when they go hungry, America’s entire service economy is left vulnerable.
