The Trump administration moved around money (dubiously) to pay military servicemembers during the shutdown this week, but roughly 1.4 million other federal employees on furlough or working for no pay are going without, missing the first of what they expect will be many missed paychecks during weeks of political stalemate. With no end in sight, federal workers are drawing down their savings accounts and retirement plans, and getting help from family members, food pantries, credit unions, and a variety of other sources, according to workers, union organizers, and aid group staff.
Those with children and other family obligations are struggling the most. Some said that the nature of their job makes it impossible to take on short-term gigs, because they may be recalled on short notice.
“I’ve been told I may come onto ‘excepted status,’ which is working and not getting paid,” said Danny, a Health and Human Services Department worker who spoke on condition of using only his first name. Because he could be recalled at any time, he can’t commit to outside work or even plan his days, causing him uncertainty, stress, and frustration. He worries not only for himself, but for his aging mom, whom he supports. Like other federal workers, he received a partial paycheck last week for some of the days leading up to the shutdown. Now he’s thinking about borrowing against his Thrift Savings Plan, the retirement vehicle for federal workers, as some of his colleagues have had to do.
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“What should I do to supplement the financial uncertainty I’m going through?” said Danny, a former U.S. Marine who served in active duty. He said he resents that lawmakers are using federal workers and veterans alike as “pawns,” and remains a steadfast public servant who takes pride in the fact that he swore an oath to the Constitution twice.
“I think a lot about the unmet needs communities have and the work that’s still left to do,” he said. “I think about how, in this climate, we’re seeing the government take back and reverse progress we’ve made to public health and veteran access to medical care. That infuriates me.”
OFFICIALLY, THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN FOR 17 DAYS. Functionally, it has been shut down for most of Trump’s second term, thanks to deadly spending cuts and layoffs orchestrated by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and former White House employee Elon Musk. Trump and Vought have been using the shutdown to torment workers. First, they threatened to not pay the 750,000 federal employees on furlough and several hundred thousand others working without pay when the shutdown ends, as legally required. Then they rolled that threat back. Next, they fired about 4,200 workers across seven agencies last Friday, including 700 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who were quickly rehired due to an undisclosed error. A federal judge halted the rest of the layoffs on Wednesday. Because of differing pay periods, about 750,000 workers missed their paychecks last week, and around the same number missed theirs on Wednesday.
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The 3,500 now-in-limbo firings—of workers at allegedly “Democrat programs,” per the president—represent less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the federal workforce, and even Vought’s latest threats only bring the number to 10,000. It looks more like a way Trump and Vought can claim to have carried out the threat in a minimal fashion, with a side benefit of thinning out departments Trump hates, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
But executive branch employees have been under a much greater assault since January. The Trump administration is not giving the exact number of departures from the federal workforce, which includes those who retired or took buyouts, as well as those the administration laid off. Adding to the poor accounting, some agencies have recently begun hiring people back because they could not function without them. The Office of Personnel Management estimates that about 300,000 federal workers may be gone by the end of the year.
Even without an exact number, the damage the job losses have brought to the Washington metropolitan area is plain. More people are selling their homes in Washington, D.C. than anywhere else in the country, according to Realtor.com, which recorded a 54.7 percent increase in property listings in August. Several months before that, the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington warned that 44 percent of full-service casual restaurants will likely close this year, thanks to federal layoffs. Food writers have chronicled what that destruction has looked like in real time.
Food insecurity is up across the entire region, Capital Area Food Bank found in its 2025 Hunger Report, which surveyed 4,000 people in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Thirty-six percent of respondents experienced food insecurity over the last year, about the same as in 2024 but “notably higher” than the 32 percent reported in 2023. The share of people experiencing “very low food security” leapt from 16 percent in 2022 to 22 percent this year. Among that group are “many members of the federal and contractor workforce whose employment has been impacted by recent cuts,” wrote the survey report authors. Unlike federal workers, contractors do not get back pay during a shutdown, making it a total loss.
Senators yesterday considered and rejected for the tenth time a House-passed bill that would officially reopen the government. Democrats continue to insist that Republicans extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that will otherwise expire in under three months, restore funding that Trump’s megabill cut from Medicaid, and refrain from rescissions or withholding of appropriated funds. Republicans say no and refuse to reopen the government, though they have found ways to fund certain activities, such as paying members of the military via unused research and development funds, and granting $41 million in fees to the Essential Air Service to continue operations through next month.
WORKERS TOLD THE PROSPECT THAT THEY EXPECT A LONG SHUTDOWN, with some noting that members of the House have been on vacation since September 19. Some lawmakers have urged the business sector to step up, as House Financial Services Committee ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) did earlier this month when she asked members of the financial services industry to help federal workers and contractors who can’t meet credit obligations because they’re not getting paid. Waters said it would be helpful for institutions to contact customers who may have trouble paying bills in full and on time because of the shutdown, and provide flexible financing arrangements that don’t harm credit scores.
Some financial institutions responded to say that they are offering zero or low-interest loans to cover missed paychecks and other services, including America’s Credit Unions, which has a resource page for the shutdown, and the Defense Credit Union Council, which does, too. USAA is also offering zero-interest loans to affected federal workers.
Cameron Cochems, an American Federation of Government Employees Vice President of Local 1127, works as a lead transportation security officer for the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) in Boise, Idaho. He described the excruciating decisions he and his colleagues are making to stay afloat. One of his colleagues, a grandmother who is raising her two grandchildren on her own, is considering borrowing from her retirement savings plan, which would cost her major financial penalties but might allow her to feed her family. Another colleague might quit her job at the TSA entirely to work for a friend’s housekeeping business, Cochems told the Prospect. It would be a major pay cut, but at least she’d be getting a steady paycheck.
As Cochems and his TSA colleagues across the country are working their often thankless jobs for zero pay, a video of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem plays on televisions at airports, blaming the shutdown on Democrats. A number of airports have refused to play the video. At his airport, Cochems said, the video was playing before the TV was turned off.
Seeing the obviously political and potentially illegal video play on loop adds insult to injury for federal workers. “Why can’t people just figure this out? It just seems like a blame game all around,” Cochems said.
State and local governments, aid organizations, and news outlets across the region have also published resources pages, including HillRag, Alexandria and Loudoun County, Virginia, the State of Maryland, Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the Partnership for Public Service. Workers themselves have crowdsourced links for help in a Google Doc, as Government Executive first reported, and they’ve also organized their own mutual aid efforts, as Centers for Disease Control workers have done.
Chris Dols, co-executive director of the Federal Unionist Network and a former member of the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Prospect that workers are doing whatever they can right now to make sure they can pay their bills. “A large part about what we have to do in this moment is to tighten the belts to get through this,” he said. “We can’t let the pain we’re enduring hold us back from the fight that must be fought. Federal workers have been beat up all year long, and if this gets resolved on Donald Trump’s terms, it will be much worse.”
A few days into the shutdown, the maid of honor at Cochems’s wedding dropped off a bag of pantry essentials for him. He said he’s grateful to have a strong network that looks out for him when he needs it, but worries about his colleagues who won’t have grocery bags brought to them by loved ones. He described a sense that something about the situation was just wrong.
“I feel good about [the groceries], but I also feel embarrassed,” he said. “I’m a college graduate. I have a federal job in the best country in the world, the strongest country in the world, and people are having to give me food. I feel like I’m some sort of charity case.”
Dols urged federal workers to get involved in their union or contact the Federal Unionist Network for organizing help if they don’t have one. He remarked that 2025 has been a big year for new organizing in the federal sector. Danny, the former Marine, also urged fellow federal workers to keep up to date via the Federal Union Network’s Save Public Services email list.
Both encouraged the wider public to find their local No Kings rally on Saturday, which organizers expect will be even bigger than the first. Danny warned that bosses take their cues from the federal government and urged workers of all kinds to come together to stop the mistreatment.
“This overreach … it’s just the beginning,” he said. “We’ll see this trickle down to other parts of the labor sector.”