Hundreds of thousands of federal employees to be furloughed while others, including FBI and CIA agents, will work without pay.

The US Capitol in the hours before the partial government shutdown [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

By Sarah Shamim

Published On 1 Oct 2025

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The United States government shutdown began on Wednesday after Democrats and Republicans in the Senate failed to agree on a short-term government funding plan.Why has the US government shut down

The US government shutdown began on 00:01 EDT (04:01 GMT) on Wednesday, which marked the beginning of the new fiscal year, at which point, the past year’s funding for government operations expired.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but failed to gather consensus to pass their bill laying out funding for government operations until November 21. Without this bill, the government cannot function.

Democrats refused to support the bill unless Republicans reverse recent cuts to Medicaid enacted under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July. Democrats proposed alternative solutions to the bill, but these were rejected by the Republicans. Congress was left deadlocked.

What happens to government employees now?

When the government shuts down, agencies must “furlough” – suspend or discharge – their “non-excepted” – or non-essential – employees.

These furloughed employees receive no pay for the duration of the shutdown. Once the government resumes operations, most will receive back pay, thanks to a 2019 bill passed by Congress enshrining this into law.

That law makes no mention of contract staff, however, meaning cleaning staff and other contractors working in affected government departments and agencies will only be paid if their contracting firm has budgeted for this.

“Excepted” employees are defined as those “who protect life and property”. These essential workers continue in their jobs during the shutdown but won’t be paid until the shutdown ends.

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Each agency has already been required to submit its own staffing plan in the event of a government shutdown.

The funding lapse could lead to approximately 750,000 federal employees being furloughed each day of the shutdown, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). This would result  in a daily loss of about $400m in wages, it said.

Many of these people may not return to their jobs, however. While the US government has faced dozens of shutdowns before the current one – and federal employees have been furloughed – the White House instructed government agencies to prepare for large-scale layoffs of federal workers in this case, via a memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on September 24.

What does ‘furlough’ mean, and how do people pay bills in the meantime?

To be furloughed means to be suspended or discharged for a period of time without pay.

“When you’re furloughed, you’re on leave without pay, just as you might remember that many people were furloughed during the pandemic,” Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at the Ireland-based University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“In this case, however, if you’re without pay, there’s also no federal support payments to cover this.”

Two years into Trump’s first term, in December 2018, a 35-day partial government shutdown occurred – the longest in modern US history – after Congress again failed to agree on government funding. Nine federal departments were fully or partially closed: agriculture, commerce, homeland security, housing and urban development, interior, justice, state, transportation and treasury.

Lucas explained that during that shutdown, many people were forced to take out loans or rely on family and friends to get by. Lucas added that some people went to food banks, which are nonprofit charitable organisations that store surplus amounts of food to distribute to those struggling financially.

“There’s no real safety net for what takes place. So that’s an immediate human cost of what’s going on here,” Lucas said.

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