Food insecurity in the D.C. area rises to more than 820,000, report says

More than 820,000 people in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are facing food insecurity, according to the Capital Area Food Bank’s annual hunger report. The tally, drawn from nearly 4,000 residents in D.C. and surrounding counties, ties the rise to policy shifts and reductions in federal funding that economists say are weighing on households even as unemployment and GDP had improved after the pandemic.

The report describes a dramatic reshaping of government funding streams with broad economic effects that erode gains made during the pandemic. “We are back just about to where we were during the pandemic,” LaMonika Jones, director of state initiatives at the Food Research and Action Center, said. The analysis notes that pandemic-era aid programs—bolstered by the American Rescue Plan Act—expanded food assistance, but those expansions have now ended and spending has tightened. It cites cuts to federal nutrition programs that have reduced aid available to tens of millions of Americans through 2035, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department also announced it would terminate its annual food security survey, calling it politicized and redundant and saying it would hinder nationwide tracking of hunger.

Unemployment in the D.C. area has climbed as federal workers were laid off. Federal employment has declined by 97,000 since January, and the area’s unemployment rate stands at 6%, higher than the national rate of 4.2%. As of May 2025, 41% of households in the region 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 for households that did not face unemployment struggles. And around two-thirds of those households said they experienced very low food security.

Macro factors also contribute to the trend: high inflation, rising cost of living, slow wage growth, and limited access to opportunity. The report says prices of goods and services are about 20% higher than they were five years ago, while household income rates have not kept up. It adds that 40% of adults in the region reported a decline in household finances, and households that had an average income of about $98,000 in 2024 reported very low food security after the spending cuts.

Jones emphasized the need to strengthen the broader set of systems on which people rely day to day. “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.”