In his day job as president of Woodward Interests, Bill Hoffman hasn’t much noticed the federal government shutdown. His New Orleans real estate development firm is still planning projects, like the redevelopment of the former Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Mid-City, and operating as usual with no disruptions to supply chains or services.
As a volunteer for Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, however, Hoffman has seen the effects up close. He’s worked with the nonprofit organization’s leadership to identify new funding sources at a time when more people around New Orleans need food assistance and federal support is drying up.
He fears it’s about to get a lot worse.
Thousands of federal workers in the state have been furloughed or are working without a paycheck. Loans and other federal funding sources are no longer flowing. And beginning Nov. 1, food stamps benefits — which help put food on the table for nearly 19% of Louisianans and more than 1 in 5 people in New Orleans — are set to run out.
The severity of that potential loss in food support prompted Gov. Jeff Landry on Friday to issue an emergency order aimed at helping him replace that federal funding with state dollars. But Second Harvest worries that food banks and other service agencies, still reeling from federal budget cuts earlier this year, will continue to see a strain.
“We’re already seeing more federal workers coming to us, and that number is going to grow,” said Hoffman, who also serves as Second Harvest board chair. “We will start to see this ripple out into the broader economy and will all start to feel it.”
Until now, the federal government shutdown, which enters its fifth week Wednesday, has mostly been a problem for the nation’s millions of federal employees, who have been furloughed or, in the case of air traffic controllers and other essential employees, forced to work without pay. States like Virginia or Maryland, which have high numbers of federal workers, feel it acutely.
Numbers label rows at Second Harvest Food Bank in Harahan, La., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
In Louisiana, the impact has been more muted because the federal workforce is relatively small — a little under 20,000 civilian workers — and President Donald Trump’s administration has selectively shifted funds to ensure that some employees, like active duty troops, continue to get paid. At least for now.
But economists and public policy groups say a quiet storm is brewing. Louisiana is already one of the poorest states in the nation, with a higher percentage of residents on federal assistance than almost any other. The longer the shutdown drags on, the greater the impact will be across the state, as furloughed workers and those who rely on federal assistance tighten their belts and brace for potentially unprecedented times.
“The dominoes are about to start falling,” said economist Stephen Barnes, executive director of the Blanco Public Policy Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “Once they do, it’s going to be very challenging for families across the state.”
Stopgaps in place
Experts say it’s not surprising that many across Louisiana in the private sector haven’t felt the effects of the shutdown yet. In part, that’s because the roughly 64,000 federal military and civilian employees in Louisiana make up only about 3% of the state’s total workforce.
Some are still collecting paychecks, or were until last week.
Others have been helped by institutions like Keesler Federal Credit Union, based in Biloxi, Mississippi, which is offering paycheck protection relief to the mostly federal government employees that make up its membership. So far, about 1,535 members have enrolled in the plan, which will cover them for 90 days, according to Keesler spokesperson T. Bradley Keith.
Volunteer Jerome Johnson packs canned goods into boxes at Second Harvest Food Bank in Harahan.
Also insulating the broader economy from the effects of the shutdown is the fact that the largest federal programs, Medicare and Social Security, have not been touched. Neither has Medicaid, though the extension of tax credits to help low-income patients afford health insurance is at the heart of the dispute between Democrats and Republicans in Congress that led to the shutdown.
“The two big programs and Medicaid are safe for now,” said Jan Moeller, executive director of Invest in Louisiana, a think tank that advocates for inclusive economic policies. “So, in a state like Louisiana, which has a huge amount of federal money but not a huge number of employees, it is going to be hard to see the effects of the shutdown in most communities.”
Just because the effects of the shutdown are not widely visible, however, doesn’t mean they’re not being felt in various pockets of the economy, Moeller said.
The National Flood Insurance Program is shuttered, which means new homeowners are unable to buy into the program, and the state’s existing 400,000 policyholders aren’t able to increase their coverage.
Louisiana’s 25,000 farmers have been unable to get a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, apply for a conservation program or receive a market report, hampering their ability to plan for the upcoming planting season.
And the state’s nearly half a million small businesses have been unable to access loans through the Small Business Administration, though data released by the SBA last week showed that only 12 loan applications totaling about $7.2 million in Louisiana went unprocessed last week because the agency was closed.
Stretched thin
If federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, runs out, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned, the shutdown will become real for a lot more people across Louisiana.
David Ogden lines up pallets of food boxes at Second Harvest Food Bank in Harahan, La., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
More than 800,000 people in Louisiana receive SNAP benefits. That’s more, as a percentage of the population, than almost any other state in the nation
On Wednesday, Landry, a Republican, said the state would shut the program down next month, blaming Democrats in Congress for the stalemate that has led to the current funding crisis.
“Without the funds, we cannot provide the benefits,” Landry said in a statement.
But on Friday, he reversed course, declaring a state of emergency and saying that “any interruption in SNAP benefits will significantly increase food insecurity among Louisiana’s most vulnerable populations, including the elderly, children and individuals with disabilities.”
He also began working with legislative leaders on a plan to keep the program afloat while the government remains shuttered. The plan would repurpose existing funds from the Louisiana Department of Health to keep benefits flowing through November and potentially tap other state money if the shutdown continues beyond then.
On Friday at the Harry Tompson Center, a day shelter in New Orleans, Marcus, a New Orleans East resident and licensed practical nurse by training who declined to give his last name, said the political finger-pointing among elected officials is frustrating.
David Ogden wraps up 40 boxes of food items on a pallet at Second Harvest Food Bank in Harahan, La., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
The monthly SNAP benefits he has received for the past two years since he lost his job barely puts food on the table now. If he loses them, the 64-year-old says his cellphone is about the only “luxury” item he could trim from his monthly expenses.
“I don’t know how much more I can stretch,” he said. “I guess I’ll be shopping more at Dollar Tree and coming more to the food pantry.”
Food pantries, however, are already hard-pressed. At an event at Second Harvest last week, Chief Strategy Officer John Sillars said the food bank will receive about 5.8 million fewer pounds of food from the federal government this year than it did last due to federal funding cuts since Trump took office.
As a result, Second Harvest will provide about 5 million fewer meals to a food-insecure population that had grown by 30,000 even before the shutdown.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, who visited Second Harvest last week to call attention to the growing crisis, said he’s worried about “the avalanche effect” that will happen if the shutdown persists.
U.S. Representative Troy Carter places canned goods into boxes at Second Harvest Food Bank in Harahan, La., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
“It impacts our families but also the grocer, the person who is stocking the shelves, the person who is selling the milk, the cereal, the eggs, the bread,” Carter said.
Landry’s announcement Friday that the state would work to continue SNAP benefits for the time being was a welcome development that will mitigate the worst outcomes for the state’s neediest residents, policy experts said. But more pain is on the way if the shutdown doesn’t end soon.
“The impacts will be acute in some places,” Barnes said. “Hopefully, we can weather those.”