Idaho has less than 1% in welfare work program; feds scream 'well done!'
About 2,100 Idahoans are on TANF; a tiny fraction are required to work
This month, the Biden administration congratulated the state of Idaho for successfully meeting its goals of having 67% of welfare recipients working, looking for work, or participating in job training programs.
“I am pleased to inform you that Idaho successfully met its overall work participation rate for fiscal year 2023 under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program,” Ann Flagg, the director of the Office of Family Assistance, to the state via a Dec. 5 letter to the state Department of Health and Welfare.
That sounds amazing — until you dig into the numbers.
Of the roughly 2,100 Idahoans who are on TANF, an average of 24 Idahoans were required to meet the program’s work requirements in the fiscal year that ended October 2023. On average, 16 Idahoans per month did so, which is how the feds arrived at the two-thirds participation rate. In real numbers, though, the actual work and training participation rate for the whole TANF program is not quite 1%.
The percentage of work-eligible welfare recipients enrolled in work and training programs for the fiscal year that ended in October 2024 was 73%, meaning there were, on average, about 12.4 people working per month out of the 17.1 who met the work requirement criteria, according to data from the state. Again, that’s less than 1% of the total program population.
TANF is a federal welfare program that provides cash assistance of a little more than $300 a month to Idahoans. It is administered through the Department of Health and Welfare. The money, supposedly, is used for food, housing, energy assistance, and childcare. An employee of the state Department of Health and Welfare speculated in an email that most of TANF’s Idaho participants are caregivers who are exempt from the program’s work requirements.
Exemptions are a normal part of federal government programs and their work requirements. In fact, policy analysts in and outside of government often provide a host of strategies for boosting work participation rates, while not actually increasing the number of people working. This would explain why every state in the country, including Idaho, were able to meet a major work requirement goal for TANF participants.
The most maddening component of this story is how the federal government is giving the public the illusion that personal accountability and responsibility — via a work requirement — are baked into welfare. When taxpayers hear that a high percentage of welfare recipients are working, they assume that it means something. Most people are unaware that government work requirements leave a lot of room for people to be excused. You could fit in a small room the number of Idahoans who actually meet the work requirement for welfare benefits.
But there’s a second maddening component, worthy of attention from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency: Note how much manpower is required to keep tabs of this part of the welfare program. For each enrollee, someone has to decide whether they’re exempt from work requirements, and then two government agencies — one federal, one state — has to track it.
I can’t imagine how much money that eats up, but it wouldn’t be shocking in the least if there were more government employees engaged in that effort than there are welfare recipients actually participating in the program.