The most visible impact of the shutdown occurred at airports, where staffing shortages among TSA employees caused lengthy delays for passengers. TSA agents are required to work during a lapse in appropriations even if they’re not receiving their paychecks because they’re considered to be essential workers. But many agency staffers called out of work to take on other paying jobs, leaving airports across the country understaffed and travelers waiting in security lines for hours. Last month, President Donald Trump ordered DHS and the Office of Management and Budget to use existing funds to pay TSA staffers, and in the days after officers began receiving their paychecks, security wait times appeared to ease at several airports.
DHS similarly emphasized that training timeline when reporting that more than 1,000 TSA agents had left their jobs in a post on X earlier this week, warning that “ahead of the FIFA World Cup and summer travel, this loss has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased TSA’s ability to meet passenger demand and left critical gaps in staffing.”
The rate at which TSA officers have quit their jobs in recent weeks is higher than the agency’s average. In 2024, the agency reported an officer attrition rate of about 8.6%. That averages out to roughly 11 officers quitting each day, according to Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation security and safety expert and professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Jacobson also pointed out that the attrition rate was not steady during the shutdown, but notably jumped in more recent days; on April 20, DHS reported that more than 830 TSA agents left their jobs, which means that 280 quit just in the less than two weeks that have passed since then.
“When you look at it over a shorter horizon, the most recent horizon, you start to realize that people are now leaving the force significantly. And that will have long-term implications for TSA—not just today, but in three months, four months,” he continued.
“It’s deeply concerning because now you have a smaller number of TSA agents who still have an enormous responsibility,” he said. “They may have to work longer hours, and so I somewhat compare this to air traffic controllers, where you have a shortage of controllers, and when that happens, you have controllers who have to work longer hours, and that’s where mistakes are made because now they start getting tired, they start missing things. And we could potentially see that with TSA agents.”
The full government previously shut down just months before the lapse in funding at DHS as well, causing staffers at TSA and other federal agencies to miss multiple paychecks last fall. TSA has reported that about 1,110 officers left their jobs at the agency during the fall shutdown.
Trump’s March order to pay TSA officers—and his subsequent order, issued days later, that directed DHS to restart compensation for employees across the department—with existing funds during the latter part of the shutdown did lead to staffers receiving paychecks again, even before Congress passed the measure reopening DHS. But last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that the department would run out of money to pay employees in that manner by the beginning of May.
“I think just passing a bill itself is not going to be enough,” Bubb told TIME ahead of the funding measure’s passage. “There is some convincing that has to be done here too to reassure people—not just the agents who are going back to work, but others who might be interested—saying, ‘Yeah, there is stability. We have a backstop in place. You’re going to get a consistent paycheck, and it’s a good job.’”
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