This paper examined the extent to which families faced hardships in moving from welfare to work, highlighting: families who received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) during the last month of the Survey of Income and Program Participation or the National Survey of American Families; families who received other public assistance in the last month of either survey; recent AFDC leavers; and families who received AFDC at some point over a year before the surveys. Hardship indicators were food insecurity, insufficient health care access, housing problems, and inadequate child care. There was little difference among families who left welfare recently compared to those who left more than a year ago, unless the family contained a full-time worker. Even then, these families did not do as well as poor families overall. Poor families who worked part-time had more difficulty, relative to poor families with a full-time worker or no worker at all, meeting housing needs. Families recently not receiving AFDC and with a full-time worker were more likely than families with a part-time worker to worry about food and have their children in child care facilities with inadequate numbers of adults. (Contains 9 tables, 27 references.) (SM)