The number of families, children and adults receiving basic cash assistance in Mississippi through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has consistently declined from around 25,000 individuals in 2010 to under 3,000 today. A close review of monthly data, instead of just annual averages, reveals a sharp uptick in TANF adult recipients in December of 2021, the month Mississippi Department of Human Services offered $1,000 bonus payments to TANF families, and a sharp uptick of child TANF recipients in April 2020, the first full month of the COVID pandemic. These abnormalities are likely the result of the department counting the supplemental pandemic aid checks as additional clients, even though they went to people already on the program.