Government employees who are not receiving paychecks during the shutdown have lost about $5,000 each on average so far, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In total, the missing pay comes to about $200 million per day.
The Times’ Jugal Patel notes that the average obscures wide variations between departments and agencies. The average Securities and Exchange Commission employee, for example, has missed $12,543 in pay, while the average Department of Agriculture employee has lost $4,446.
An earlier study of government workers’ finances suggests that the losses won’t be easy to handle for most workers. A team of economists analyzing the government shutdown of 2013 found that most government workers did not have enough money to cover two weeks’ worth of expenses, with one in five living paycheck to paycheck. “Just like many Americans,” the economists wrote Wednesday, “many government workers don’t have much emergency money set aside.”
