The shutdown hits government employees already suffering from Trump’s cuts
Ten days into the government shutdown, federal employees are officially feeling the pinch.
Today was supposed to be payday. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people are forced to go without them.
More than 600,000 federal workers are currently being furloughed, with about three times that number forced to work without receiving pay — including active-duty military personnel who are set to lose their first paycheck next week.
Why did we write this?
While many Americans are not feeling the effects of the government shutdown, federal employees have lost their first paycheck — the latest blow in a difficult year.
But it is not only the temporary halt in the payment of salaries that causes them stress. The closure comes amid an ongoing purge of the federal government by the Trump administration, which has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, shuttered entire agencies, and left many remaining workers worried about their job security. Some had spouses who were also former federal employees already out of work. They are on edge from threats from both President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought that they will use the shutdown to lay off more people, or deny pay, when the shutdown ends.
A former State Department employee who was laid off last summer will not receive severance pay until the government reopens. Her husband is still a federal employee and is currently on leave. (I asked not to mention the name of the department in which he works for fear of retaliation.)
“The lockdown has been a big problem for our family financially because we went from two incomes to one,” she says. “And now one income is gone as long as the lockdown lasts.”
She’s facing a bleak job market due to a recent glut of laid-off workers, has stopped eating out and is looking for bargains at the grocery store. She’s debating whether she should pull her young daughter out of daycare to save money — a difficult move to back, given that Washington-area daycare centers often have months-long waiting lists, making it difficult to return to work if she finds one.
Internet shutdowns often start with a whimper and end once voters begin to feel truly disturbed by their effects. But it is the workers themselves who are most severely affected. It appears that this lockdown may last longer – and cut more deeply – than other lockdowns.
Deadlock in Congress
Both sides seem dug into a long fight. Democrats are demanding Republicans include funding to expand government subsidies for people subject to Obamacare who are about to see huge increases in premiums. They also want assurances that the Trump administration will not back away from new budget agreements, as it has done in recent months by firing people and refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress. Republicans are insisting on a no-strings-attached bill that would keep government spending at previously agreed-upon levels until late November.
So far, polls indicate that voters blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown, and that they overwhelmingly support extending Obamacare subsidies.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, told the Monitor on Wednesday that most of his constituents “don’t pay much attention right now” to the shutdown because they don’t feel it themselves.
“People in America are distracted by so many other things [in D.C.] “They’re putting a lot of attention into how important this is to the average voter right now,” he said. “It’s just government employees that are paying as much attention to it.” And my heart goes out to them.”
The last major government shutdown was in early 2019, lasting 35 days. Then, President Trump relented in part because ordinary people began to feel the impact of the shutdown — and polls showed voters blaming him. Major airports, including LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International in the New York area, saw flight delays of up to 90 minutes due to the closure. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport saw rapidly growing wait times in security lines a week before the city prepared to host the Super Bowl.
This time, airports like Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport have already seen significant delays as some air traffic controllers call in sick.
Impact on military service members
It’s not just civilian government employees who are facing the real-world repercussions of this closure.
Active duty military members are supposed to be paid on October 15, and this will be the first time in modern history that military members will not be exempt from the shutdown. A bipartisan bill to exempt active-duty military members is building pressure from rank-and-file lawmakers to vote on it. But Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have so far stuck to their refusal to summon members to return to the city to cast any votes unless Democrats in the Senate decide to withdraw.
On Thursday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said It went on C-SPAN to take constituents’ calls — and was quickly rebuked by Samantha, a Republican military wife based at Fort Belvoir, Va., who said her family lives paycheck to paycheck and she has two “medically fragile children” who will not “get the medication they need to live their lives” if her husband doesn’t get paid on time.
“You have the ability to do this. As a Republican, I’m very disappointed in my party, and I’m very disappointed in you because you had the ability to call the House back,” she said. “I beg you to pass this legislation. My children could die.”
House Speaker Johnson responded by expressing sympathy, blaming Democrats for refusing to support a clean extension. “We had a vote on paying the salaries of the troops. The decision has been ongoing for three weeks,” he said.
Notably, a number of government employees who were laid off or furloughed say they are glad Democrats imposed the shutdown, despite the pain it is causing them personally. They say they’ve been abused by the Trump administration for months, and they’re glad Democrats are finally standing up and exerting some influence.
“I’m happy, actually, about the shutdown,” says one federal employee, saying they’re relieved to see Democrats “putting their foot down and actually trying to hold the ground.”
Peeling back at summer camp and after school care
Another former federal employee who spoke with Al-Monitor earlier this year was laid off. His wife still works in a federal job, but asked that the department not be named for fear of retaliation from Trump administration officials.
“It’s shocking — as intended,” he says. They tightened their belts, pulled their child from summer camp programs after being laid off, and canceled after-school care to save money. He says there are few job opportunities in the area. They are considering moving out of the Washington area in search of a better work environment.
“To be completely honest, the fun of living in the DMV is over,” the worker said, referring to the Maryland and Virginia metropolitan area. “It’s been torn down.”
Office of Management and Budget Director Vaught said that was the goal in a 2024 speech outlining his vision for Trump’s second term.
“when [bureaucrats] “When they wake up in the morning, we want them not to want to go to work because they are increasingly seen as bad guys. We want to expose them to trauma,” he said.
All of the federal employees interviewed for this story say they are concerned that the Trump administration will follow through on its threat to lay off more federal employees in retaliation against Democrats, and will try to block back pay for federal careers they don’t like after the shutdown ends. The White House has circulated an internal memo from the Office of Management and Budget stating that federal employees are not automatically entitled to back pay, despite a 2019 law signed by President Trump himself to ensure exactly that.
“We’re going to make cuts that are going to be permanent,” President Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. “And we’re just going to cut Democrats’ programs, I hate to break it to you.” “They wanted to do it, so we’ll give them a little taste of their own medicine.”
A year of career uncertainty
This comes after months of stress and uncertainty for federal employees. One IRS employee spent the first months of the year checking his email every morning to see if he had been laid off, as Mr. Trump’s new government efficiency department moved to lay off all probationary employees who started working during the year, a category the new employee fell into. Their latest vacation is just “another unpleasant thing to happen on top of all the other unpleasant things happening this year.”
One FDA employee says they feel like they are being “used as pawns” again. The constant threat of layoffs has been “an ax swinging over our heads” all year, says one Census Bureau employee. One Labor Department employee says half of their colleagues have already been laid off this year, so the shutdown pales in comparison to the “wrecking ball” the department has already brought to the department.
One current State Department employee says he is now more concerned about not getting his paychecks back than he was in previous shutdowns, when it wasn’t legally guaranteed, because the Trump administration was “ignoring the law.” [in] In all sorts of ways.” A former federal employee predicts that the Trump administration will be happy to fight the order in court — and even if it loses, the damage will be done to families who have gone months or more without paychecks.
The State Department employee says this lockdown feels markedly different from others he’s experienced. This time, the closure comes after months of worrying about whether his job — and his entire office — would be eliminated. She has survived so far. There has been almost no communication from senior officials at the department — even compared to the 2019 shutdown when Mr. Trump was in office.
“It felt like you were being kicked for a year,” he says. “And now, it’s like you don’t exist.”
Victoria Hoffman reported from Boston.