With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the Trump administration’s promised layoffs.

Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate.

“Luckily I was able to pay rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worker. “But for sure I am going to have bills that are going to go unpaid this month, and I really don’t have many options.”

The shutdown has a familiar feel for many federal employees who endured past stalemates — including during President Donald Trump’s first term — but this time, the stakes are higher. The Republican White House is leveraging federal workers’ jobs to pressure Democrats to soften their demands.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and other Republican leaders have said the government must reopen before they will negotiate with Democrats on the health subsidies.

Farruggia is the head of the American Federation of Government Employees local representing employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees who have been furloughed from the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online.

With the agency’s leadership in turmoil and still rattled from a shooting, the shutdown and new firings mean “people are scared, nervous, anxious, but also really just exasperated,” Farruggia said.

After Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said last week on social media that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, Vice President JD Vance doubled down on the threat Sunday, saying “the longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be.”

The layoffs have begun across federal agencies. Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the move by Trump’s budget office.

In a court filing on Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees from eight departments and agencies would be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

Jessica Sweet, an Albany, New York, Social Security claims specialist who is a union steward of AFGE Local 3343 in New York, said, “I, myself, have a backup plan” in case she is fired during the shutdown, “but I know most people don’t.”

She says the Social Security Administration is already so short-staffed from layoffs earlier this year brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency, she doesn’t fear a massive layoff during the shutdown.