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Understanding the status of federal employees as the government shutdown continues

The government shutdown is affecting the federal workforce in varied and continually evolving ways. While some federal employees continue to be paid from funding not tied to annual appropriations, many are furloughed or working without pay.  

Moreover, the status of federal employees during a shutdown is not necessarily static, and employees may begin a shutdown in one status and move to another as the shutdown continues.

The federal workforce during a shutdown 

Before a shutdown, federal agencies publish plans that indicate how many employees they expect to furlough and how many they expect will keep working—with or without pay—if the government closes.  

The Partnership for Public Service’s latest Fed Figures analysis explores these contingency plans, breaking down how different agency workforces were expected to be affected by the shutdown, according to original plans published before Oct. 1, 2025. 

As the charts demonstrate, agencies vary widely in how they categorize employees during a shutdown.  

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, most employees are funded by a source other than annual appropriations and keep working with pay during a shutdown. On the other hand, over 85% of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education are furloughed. 

Changing status as the shutdown continues 

As a shutdown goes on and leftover funding is depleted or external circumstances require different configurations of employees to work, agencies may update their contingency plans and adjust the status of their employees. Given the length of this shutdown, several agencies have over the past few weeks adjusted how much of their workforces are furloughed or working.  

The IRS, for instance, kept its all its employees working with pay during the first week of the shutdown, using funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.  

The agency then published a subsequent contingency plan, noting that only 39,870 of its over 74,000 employees would keep working. The rest would be furloughed beginning on Oct. 8.  

In its shutdown plan, the General Services Administration noted that over 3,300 employees were financed by carryover funds from the previous fiscal year. As such, these employees would continue to work for pay until the funds were depleted. As the shutdown progressed, GSA initiated additional furloughs in several phases, sending more employees home and decreasing the percentage of agency employees still working. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration also recategorized its workforce as the shutdown continued.  

While all of the agency’s employees originally continued working despite the shutdown, on Oct. 20, 2025, NNSA furloughed 1,400 employees—the majority of its workforce and the first time it has ever done so during a shutdown. This left less than a quarter of the agency’s full staff to advance NNSA’s mission of ensuring the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile.  

These are just a few examples of the changes federal employees across government are experiencing the longer the shutdown continues. 

Conclusion 

Federal workers are profoundly impacted by a government shutdown, regardless of their status, with many facing uncertainty about when they will receive their next paycheck. The Trump administration has also pursued an unprecedented effort to conduct reductions in force during the current shutdown, adding even more upheaval.  

The upshot of all this disruption is a government less equipped to meet public needs and national challenges, with travelers, small business owners, those receiving federal benefits and many others dealing with gaps in critical federal services and support.   

Federal employees are the backbone of our government, providing crucial public benefits, managing the economy, protecting our national security and more. Ultimately, shutdowns only disrupt and hamper government’s ability to operate effectively. It is up to our elected leaders to set aside partisan divisions over spending and fulfill their core responsibility to keep the government functioning.  

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