Stress on Employees Grows as Shutdown Nears Record Length

Several unmanned stations at the Main TSA Screening Checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 21 October 2025. The prolonged US federal government shutdown has resulted in delays at TSA screening checkpoints and flight delays for air travelers nationwide. Employees with the TSA and FAA Air Traffic Control are among the ‘essential workers’ who are working without pay Image: ERIK S LESSER/EPA/Shutterstock
By: FEDweek Staff

Many of the same signs of growing stress that were seen in the record-long partial government shutdown of late 2018-early 2019 are now starting to show as the current one approaches that one in length.

Most federal employees who are unpaid—whether required to work or on furlough—received last week a payless distribution for the pay period that ended October 18, after two weeks earlier having received a distribution covering only through September 30 in the prior payout. Further, they now are facing deadlines for both regular monthly payments and the November 1 end of what promises to be a second payless biweekly period, for which another empty pay distribution is to be made about a week later.

The experience of several empty pay distributions helped bring to an end the prior shutdown that lasted 35 days, as unpaid employees increasingly turned to unemployment claims, gig jobs and charitable help, and those still on the job increasingly called in sick because they could not afford the commuting costs. That is happening again for example among air traffic controllers and TSA screeners, with high-visibility impacts on the public.

Also as in the prior lengthy shutdown, there has been a mix of agencies furloughing more employees as stopgap sources of funding have run out and agencies calling furloughed employees back to work—although still unpaid—because of the need to get work done.

The TSP meanwhile has seen an increase in loans and withdrawals, with loan requests up by 35 percent to just under 50,000 and withdrawals up 15 percent to 121,000 October 1-25 compared with the same period last year. Further, phone calls to the ThriftLine customer service line were up 23 percent to 183,000, the TSP governing board was told at its monthly meeting October 28.

The TSP added, though, that the increase “may be due to a number of factors, including the general economic and market conditions, an increase in federal retirements, the lapse in appropriations, or other elements that could impact on each participant’s financial decisions.” Further, the figures remain below those of February, traditionally one of the TSP’s busier months for loans and withdrawals, it said.

The prospect of federal employees needing food assistance “should trouble the conscience of every member of Congress and indeed every American,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said in a letter to Congress. “Whether they are declared excepted workers or are furloughed—a designation they do not choose—federal workers are for the most part not being paid. Yet their obligations remain to pay mortgages and monthly rents, credit card bills and childcare, and gasoline and automobile loans.”

AFGE has called on the Senate to agree to a House-passed funding extension lasting through November 21, even though it does not contain language backed by Democrats to extend several subsidies in healthcare programs nor language further restricting the White House from reprogramming, or refusing to spend, appropriated funds.

“AFGE’s hope since October 1 has been that the spending impasse would be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides of the aisle, including on the critical question of healthcare affordability that members of both parties have acknowledged must be addressed. In the meantime, the government must be funded. With less than a month before Thanksgiving, no federal worker should have to turn to a food pantry to help prepare the family table,” he wrote.

The AFGE so far is alone among federal unions—which typically move in tandem with each other and with congressional Democrats on broad federal workplace issues—in that position, although others are expressing the same alarm and concern about the impact on federal employees.

The Senate has failed in more than a dozen votes to produce the needed 60 votes to pass either the GOP-sponsored bill or an alternative containing the provisions sought by Democrats. It currently has no further votes scheduled for this week.

The House meanwhile remains in an extended recess as both parties continue to blame the other for the shutdown.

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