Food insecurity stays at elevated ranges for Washington, DC-area residents in 2025 and the share of individuals experiencing the most extreme stage of food insecurity has risen, exacerbated in latest months by the Trump administration’s cuts to federal jobs and funding, in keeping with the Capital Area Food Bank’s annual survey launched on Thursday.
As of May, 36% of households surveyed indicated that they’ve skilled food insecurity over the previous yr. Notably, 41% of households with direct or oblique federal authorities employment that had skilled job loss stated they had been food insecure, in keeping with the study, with two-thirds of these households indicating they skilled the worst stage — “very low food security.” (That time period describes people with “multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake,” according to the US Department of Agriculture.)
“The data in this year’s survey paints a picture of a regional hunger problem that is persistent and is deepening,” Radha Muthiah, CEO and president of Capital Area Food Bank, informed NCS. “Seventy-five-thousand more people are now saying that they’re severely food insecure, and so that means they’re reducing the size of their meals, they’re skipping meals, this includes children as well. And so that is disturbing to us as a finding.”
The survey additionally shed gentle on a few of the powerful monetary selections being made by households impacted by federal job cuts. Around three in 4 (74%) in that group stated they’re tapping into their financial savings to make ends meet, in keeping with the survey. Meanwhile, 55% of them stated they’ve stopped including to long-term financial savings whereas nearly one in 4 (24%) stated they’ve resorted to drawing on retirement funds prior to deliberate.
The research launched Thursday was carried out in May by the CAFB in conjunction with the analysis group NORC at the University Chicago, surveying practically 4,000 DMV residents in areas that the food financial institution companies.
NCS additionally spoke with a number of food banks round the Washington space, lots of which stated they’ve seen a rise in the demand for food assist since the starting of the yr.
“We have noticed an uptick and are seeing some federal employees at our community-wide food distributions,” stated Roxanne Yamashita, the government director of Small Things Matter in Rockville, Maryland. “My husband and I are both [federal workers], but currently employed at the moment, so seeing what is happening is especially heartbreaking to us.”
The Trump administration has got down to dramatically scale back the dimension of the federal authorities – the nation’s largest employer – enacting rounds of cuts throughout companies which have resulted in 1000’s of federal staff shedding their jobs.
Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia noticed a lower of round 22,100 federal workers from January to May 2025, in keeping with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s analysis.
But the broader financial influence goes past people that had been instantly employed by the federal authorities and subsequently misplaced their jobs. The downstream results contact on authorities contractors, service industries that cater to DC-area staff in addition to quite a few organizations and establishments that work intently with the authorities.
“Employment changes within the DMV will have an impact on a variety of economic outcomes in the area, including tax revenues, household spending and debt, and the housing market,” the Richmond Fed’s evaluation stated.
The US is additionally confronting plenty of macroeconomic challenges, together with persistently excessive costs, volatility stemming from Trump’s new tariffs and a slowing jobs market. Lower-income households are prone to grow to be more and more reliant on neighborhood food banks, after Congress handed a sweeping home agenda package deal that can make large cuts to the food stamp program. About 2.4 million fewer Americans are forecast to obtain food stamp advantages in a median month.
And the influence of all of those converging components on food insecurity for Americans might quickly grow to be more durable to measure. The Trump administration is terminating the federal authorities’s annual report on food insecurity, NCS reported.
At the Arlington Food Assistance Center in Virginia, CEO Charles Meng informed NCS that whereas their clientele has appeared to stay largely the similar, the group has seen a higher want from lots of the low-income households that they serve.
“What we’ll see is people cutting back on various kinds of services because they want to save money,” Meng stated. “So, we’ll see more of the hotel workers and the lawn maintenance folks and all of the low-income people who have been coming to us. … The bottom line is, we’re going to see many more of the same families we already see because they’re going to be cut first.”