The timing for when the roughly 1.4 million federal workers who were furloughed or working without pay will receive their back pay may vary by agency. Many have missed two full paychecks and a partial one during the shutdown.
In the past, it only took a few business days for workers to be paid, said Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees. But she was concerned that this year it could take longer because many human resources staffers at agencies were furloughed or have left amid the administration’s downsizing efforts.
Adding to the complexity is that federal workers are not all paid at the same time since the government uses multiple pay systems, said Stier of Partnership for Public Service.
“It’s a huge undertaking on top of a lot of other things that the federal employees are going to have to be doing,” he said, though it should take a matter of days, not weeks.
But “until we get paid, everyone’s going to still have those same financial stressors on them,” said Ben Emmel, who represents 2,400 Government Accountability Office employees as president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers Local 1921.
House staffers, who are paid monthly, will receive their retroactive compensation on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to a House administrative official.
Heading for the exit?: Caitlin Lewis, who runs CivicMatch, which connects federal employees with jobs in state or local governments, said the shutdown has pushed many federal workers to the exits.
“People want to stick it out as long as they can. But this is the latest in a deep cycle of instability that is pushing public servants out of the government since the inauguration,” Lewis said.
