OPM removes language on back pay for furloughed feds from shutdown guidance

With a partial government shutdown underway, the Office of Personnel Management has updated its shutdown guidance to remove references to the guarantee of back pay for furloughed federal employees once a funding lapse ends.

OPM’s previous shutdown guidance from September 2025 stated that furloughed employees will get paid once a lapse in appropriations ends, at the earliest date possible. The September guidance also referenced the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA), a law meant to ensure retroactive compensation for both excepted and furloughed federal employees during government shutdowns.

After President Donald Trump signed GEFTA into law in 2019 during his first term, both OPM and the Office of Management and Budget affirmed that excepted and furloughed employees would be given back pay as soon as possible, once any current or future shutdown ends.

But during last fall’s government shutdown, OMB officials backtracked on the guarantee of back pay for furloughed employees. Still, the spending deal that Congress passed to end the previous shutdown in November 2025 ensured that both furloughed and excepted federal employees would be retroactively compensated.

OPM’s more recent update to its shutdown guidance in January, however, revised several sections to remove references to back pay for furloughed employees, including in sections on federal retirement, health insurance and unemployment benefits. OPM’s guidance now states that “Congress will determine via legislation whether furloughed employees receive pay for furlough periods.”

The newly revised shutdown guidance also removed sections explaining the pay rates for both furloughed and intermittent federal employees. Language stating that “an employee is entitled to receive his or her rate of basic pay for the furlough time to the extent that he or she would have been in a basic pay status but for the lapse in appropriations” no longer appears in the OPM document. 

Additionally, guidance previously clarifying that there will be no effect on the accrual of annual and sick leave for furloughed employees was removed as part of OPM’s update. The new guidance also no longer contains references to reductions in force (RIFs), which were initially added during the shutdown last fall.

An OPM spokesperson referred all questions on the changes to the shutdown guidance to OMB. OMB did not immediately respond to Federal News Network’s request for comment.

OMB recently made some changes to its own shutdown guidance, which now states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay “when specific appropriations for such payments are enacted.”

Along with the revisions regarding furloughed employees, OPM added a new section on “performance and conduct” to its guidance, telling agencies they are allowed to take performance-based adverse actions against employees during a shutdown, as long as the action is determined to be exempt or excepted. OPM said deciding whether to take adverse actions during a shutdown should be made on a case-by-case basis.

“Agencies should consider the unique circumstances surrounding each situation, presidential priorities, the agency’s mission, and Office of Management and Budget shutdown furlough guidance,” OPM wrote in the January guidance. “An adverse action could potentially be an excepted activity where an employee’s performance or conduct immediately threatens life, property, or an ongoing exempt or excepted activity. In other circumstances — for example, where the subject employee has demonstrated a long pattern of poor performance that is not impacting or preventing the agency from carrying out excepted activities — it is less likely that taking such an action would qualify as an excepted activity.”

A partial government shutdown began last week, impacting employees at some executive branch agencies. The Senate on Friday approved a spending package based on a compromise reached between Trump and congressional Democrats over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The House is expected to vote on the group of appropriations bills on Tuesday.

Over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said House Republicans should not count on House Democrats to pass the spending deal. But House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said Monday that she plans to vote in favor of the spending package.

“We need to take these next 10 days to work to radically reform ICE,” DeLauro said at a House Rules Committee hearing on the spending deal.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said during the hearing that “funding these missions isn’t optional.”

“We can take the amended bill, or we can leave it. My view is that we should take it,” Cole said.

Impacted employees notified of furlough status

Federal employees at agencies impacted by the partial shutdown have been notified of their furlough status. Federal employees impacted by a government shutdown are typically given up to four hours to carry out standard shutdown activities.

The State Department notified employees about their status last Friday, but instructed all employees to show up to work on Monday, regardless of their designation.

“Today, you should have received a message providing you with your individual status, noting whether you are in an excepted or non-excepted position. However, at this time, I am directing all personnel, regardless of whether you are excepted or not, to report to work on your next scheduled workday as normal,” the department’s Under Secretary for Management Jason Evans told employees in a Jan. 31 memo.

A majority of State Department personnel — about 62% of its workforce — are “excepted,” meaning they work without pay during a government shutdown, but typically receive back pay once the shutdown ends.

Evans told employees that the Trump administration “continues to work closely with Congress on appropriations for FY 2026,” and that his office would provide another update on Monday regarding “orderly shutdown plans, if needed.”

A State Department employee told Federal News Network that agency leadership is directing management “to be liberal about determining what work should continue.” The employee said the department, by contrast, “very strictly construed” what work was allowed to continue during last year’s record shutdown.

During last year’s 43-day shutdown, the State Department directed passport services employees to keep working without pay, even though this part of the agency is fee-funded and can normally pay staff on time during a lapse in congressional funding.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The Education Department has furloughed about 87% of its workforce, according to its contingency plans from last year.

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, said in a statement that the department’s work is now largely “on hold,” and that employees are either furloughed or working without pay.

“The hardworking public servants at the Department will once again not receive paychecks because they are either furloughed or working without pay,” Gittleman said. “This comes nearly three months after the end of the historic 43-day shutdown, which forced some of our members to borrow money or use public assistance to put food on the table.”

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