Federal workers’ costs mount as payday arrives with no relief during shutdown
Friday is payday for federal employees. Or at least it would be if the government wasn’t shut down.
Instead, Friday will mark the first time that many federal employees, including those who have been working for the past four weeks, won’t receive a paycheck.
The absence of a steady paycheck is putting civil servants in California under financial strain, employees said. They’ve dipped into savings, taken out loans to cover rent, visited food banks to feed themselves and cancelled medical appointments to make ends meet, union leaders and civil servants reported.
For those who worked through the last month-long government shutdown that ended in 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term, the loss in pay is familiar. But this chaotic shutdown is worse, several workers based in the California said, because the Trump administration has threatened to fire civil servants while they’re furloughed and withhold back pay.
“It creates a massive amount of stress for us in the office,” federal worker Sean Gibbons said. “We have to go in every day, but when we get home we have bills that are stacking up.”
Gibbons, a claim specialist who has been working without pay for the Social Security Administration in the Bay Area, said he expects that he will eventually be paid for the work he’s done since Oct. 1, but the uncertainty around when the shutdown will end is anxiety inducing.
“We come in every day, we do our job, but it just feels like we’re not getting our part of the bargain,” Gibbons said.
On Thursday, the Senate failed to pass a Republican-led bill that would have paid employees, like Transportation Security Officers and air traffic controllers, during the shutdown. The majority of Democrats voted against the measure, arguing that it would give Trump too much leeway in determining which federal employees would get paid.
“The Republican bill is a ruse. It’s nothing more than another tool for Trump to hurt federal workers and American families and to keep this shutdown going for as long as he wants,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said on Thursday.
The Democrats put forward a countermeasure that would have paid all federal employees while the government is closed, but Republicans blocked that bill from getting a vote.
The shutdown’s effects are acute for government workers. Lawmakers in Washington are beginning to sound the alarm on how those impacts might be spreading.
“For many people that don’t work for the federal government, they don’t feel it, but there are many people around that do and they feel it in a very real way. And this is exceptionally unnecessary. Republicans spoke out loud and clear, even last session, voting to say we don’t want to have government shutdowns at all,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told reporters Wednesday after a meeting with the president.
A loss for workers, and the American public
The financial strain is hitting those at the lower end of the federal pay scale hardest.
Matthew Dorsey, the National Federation of Federal Employees’ legislative director, said those who work for the National Parks Service and U.S. Forest Service in California are having to pick up second jobs and visit food banks to make ends meet.
The California Association of Food Banks reported that since the shutdown began there has been an increase in the number of visits, particularly in San Diego, Ventura, and Sacramento, which have a high concentration of military families. California has over 162,000 active duty service members and is home to over 150,000 civil service employees.
Trump has ensured that some federal workers continue receiving pay through the shutdown, including active-duty military personnel, FBI special agents and U.S. Board Patrol officers, but hundreds of thousands of civil services employees haven’t been compensated for much of October.
Alphonzo Breland, the president of a local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents roughly 1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees in San Francisco and Oakland, said the union has referred members to credit unions and food banks to help them navigate the loss in pay.
He knew of two members who took out low-interest loans to help them cover rent. Over half of his members are furloughed.
Beyond the impact on civil servants, the shutdown is affecting the federal government’s ability to serve the public. One example of which is that Social Security offices are not able to provide benefit verification letters to those requesting them. The letters enable Americans to access financial assistance for housing and support from nonprofits.
Additionally, Oct. 15 was the filing deadline for those who requested an extension on their 2025 returns, Breland said, but taxpayers couldn’t get assistance in person at IRS walk-in offices because some were closed.
Call sites reported that customers are waiting upwards of three hours to reach a live representative, Breland said.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the government lost $2 billion in tax revenue during the shutdown that ended in 2019 due to tax evasion, which was likely not recouped. The CBO estimated the government paid furloughed employees $3 billion and paid $6 billion in back pay to those who worked without compensation during the longest shutdown in the country’s history.
If Congress doesn’t pass a continuing resolution to reopen the government by Nov. 5, the current shutdown will break that record.
‘Impacts their sense of identity’
The loss of financial stability causes significant stress, anxiety and depression for many people, said Hannah Wesolowski, the chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“Anytime anyone loses their income, it not only causes that disruption to their life, but it also impacts their sense of identity,” she added.
Wesolowski said it’s difficult at this stage to measure the shutdown’s impact on federal workers’ mental health, but NAMI’s northern Virginia chapter, which covers an area that has a high density of government employees, has seen a significant uptick in demand for support and resources.
Several federal workers, including Breland and Gibbons, said they want Congress to reopen the government so they can continue providing critical services to the public, without having to think about when they’ll get their paycheck.
Transportation Security Administration officers are one group of employees deemed essential and have not been furloughed, but they won’t see a paycheck Friday, said James Mudrock, the president of AFGE Local 1230, which represents TSA officers in Northern California.
Child care is a particularly acute issue for TSA agents, Mudrock said. TSA officers frequently work unusual hours, and it’s difficult to find child care early in the morning or late at night.
Now, four weeks into working without pay, they’re not going to be able to pay for some to watch their children, he added.
Mudrock said the union has been setting aside money to provide members with financial assistance. During the last shutdown, Mudrock said some of his members lost their housing because they went more than a month without pay.
“It’s not going to be better this time,” Mudrock said. “It’s probably going to be worse because I have no idea when this is going to end.”
A continued onslaught
In the ten months since Trump returned to the White House, many federal employees said they have experienced a continued onslaught by the administration. October’s shutdown is the latest attack.
At the beginning of the year, Trump ally and Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a push to cut the federal workforce through deferred resignation programs and layoffs. Before that, the incoming Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought said he wanted to put federal employees “in trauma.”
Employees say the current administration has followed through on that promise.
“It’s obviously been a wild year, even before the shutdown, in terms of our sense of whether we were going to have a job the next day, week, month,” said Jeff Martin, a steward with the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1950, which represents those who work for the United States Department of Agriculture.
Martin noted that government jobs are often less lucrative than similar positions in the private sector, but they have the alternative benefit of stability. The absence of a reliable paycheck is putting that into question. It’s another move to disrupt the civil service, he said.
As of October, over 211,000 civil servants have left the federal workforce, according to the latest data from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.
Martin and his partner have been trying to have a child in recent years. His wife is pregnant now, but the events of the last year have made it difficult to live a normal life.
“Of course, this whole thing adds a level of uncertainty, anxiety, right?” he said.
This story was originally published October 24, 2025 at 11:45 AM.
