Federal Shutdowns Are Steering Workers Away From Government Careers

Antoinette Wade believes in her mission as a TSA agent: keeping the friendly skies friendly, safe and secure. She joined up 18 years ago and feels dedicated to her work.

But she cautions a younger generation about the risks of jumping into a career with the federal government after repeated, lengthy shutdowns that left tens of thousands of people like herself working without a paycheck. It’s advice she wonders if she should have taken herself.

“I definitely would have considered other opportunities,” Wade, the president of the union for Transportation Security Administration workers in Louisiana and Mississippi, told NOTUS. “I feel like my job is contributing to society, and I took great pride in that, and still do. But the uncertainty of all of this is really having a lot of people weighing what they can financially afford to do if this is going to be how it is.”

Wade isn’t the only federal worker doubting a career in government after two record-breaking shutdowns in the past year. A recent poll from the Partnership for Public Service shows that satisfaction among federal workers is sagging – only 32% feel satisfied, with a majority saying that feeling has worsened since 2024.

Max Stier, the director of the partnership, told NOTUS that the repeated government shutdowns have factored into a mass exodus from the federal workforce that could dramatically reshape the government in the years to come.

“Every red light is blinking on the dashboard,” Stier said, adding that there has been “a layer cake of horror” in the federal workforce since the Trump administration’s mass layoffs last year.

Fear among federal workers about government shutdowns is new, according to Stier. The budget fights leading to temporary closures didn’t begin until the 1980s and have never been as common as they are now.

The 2025 partial shutdown, which affected most of the federal government, lasted a record-setting 43 days. The ongoing budget impasse of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA agents, has broken that record, now exceeding 60 days without a clear path to a resolution.

And the odds of more frequent government shutdowns are increasing as Democrats and Republicans in Congress struggle to find common ground on almost anything, Stier added.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn, whose home state of Texas has among the most federal workers in the nation, told NOTUS that he wouldn’t be surprised to see more shutdowns. Cornyn said he understands why federal workers in his state might consider a different career path.

“If recent history is any guide, I think there is a probability that at some point we’ll have another one,” Cornyn said. “I think the political environment is part of what you have to calculate in terms of your decision to either work in the private sector or the government, for better or worse. That’s just the way it is.”

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents Virginia, with the second-highest number of federal workers of any state, said that he hopes the Senate will avoid more shutdowns and worries about the declining interest in signing up for federal service.

“I’m very worried about it. The shutdowns are one thing, but you have a head of an [Office of Management and Budget] who says his goal is to traumatize federal workers,” Kaine said. “I still meet a lot of young, altruistic people who want to serve their country, and they feel like being a federal employee could be a good thing, but I think it’s gotten less attractive.”

The Department of Justice is one agency that’s been particularly affected, according to Andrew Mergen, who left the department in 2022 after 33 years. Mergen now teaches at Harvard Law School, where he encourages law students to go into government service, arguing it provides an unparalleled expertise.

But fellowships and programs that were once impossibly competitive are now undesirable, he said.

“I did honors program hiring for eight years,” Mergen said. “I was hired through the honors program. It has historically been super-competitive and people now are not applying and they’re not interested in going to DOJ.”

While there are other factors at play in considering federal careers, government shutdowns don’t help, Mergen said. It’s extremely difficult to be a DOJ lawyer during a shutdown, he said, when work is halted and lawyers, many of whom are still saddled with student loans, go unpaid until Congress finally passes a budget.

“People have switched their ambitions to be state [prosecutors], they go to state and local governments and the federal government has become perceived as a very undesirable place to be,” Mergen said. “And government shutdowns play a role in that, for sure.”

Stier warned that the consequences of dwindling interest in government service will be wide-reaching, and will affect agencies far beyond the TSA and DOJ. Vital government programs that typically flew under the radar and ran smoothly will cease to exist, and the American public will feel the impacts, he added.

“It’s a horrifying way to run any organization and it’s dangerous to run a government this way,” Stier said. “There’s no other workforce in our country that can be required to work and not be paid, and it’s plainly not sustainable.”