Also, as it says in the article, you are eligible for food stamps if you earn $1265/month. You can work a minimum wage job 40 hours a week full time and not even get to that point. That's the working poor. So until the minimum wage is raised, looks like we'll just have to keep subsidizing people whose employers don't want to give their employees a living wage, but who then want to call food stamp recipients lazy bums who soak the taxpayers.
This doesn't seem applicable in Oregon, unless it's after tax income (yes the poor definitely pay federal income taxes if they don't have kids). Oregon minimum wage is supposedly 9.25 an hour. So a rough calculation shows for even in Feb: 9.25 * 40 * 4 = $1480, so it will exceed the threshold, as will the California minimum wage of $9 an hour.

Workers earning minimum wage make up less than 5% of the workforce while people receiving food assistance make up 20% of the population in those states mentioned in the article. It seems there might be something more at work here.
well the minimum wage workers in Oregon may not qualify, but real unemployment could make up for it, it's higher than the official unemployment rate.