As Congress voted down more proposals to fund the government, President Donald Trump’s statement that he will make more job cuts has added to the unease. Minnesota is home to more than 30,000 federal workers.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
October 2, 2025 at 11:00AM
For Ted Gostomski, a Wisconsin-based biologist studying the Great Lakes region, the federal government shutdown adds to the uncertainty he has felt about his job since President Donald Trump took office.
“Everybody’s worried,” said Gostomski, whose office, deemed nonessential, closed Wednesday as the government shutdown took effect.
Similar scenes played out in federal offices across Minnesota and the rest of the country on Wednesday. Government shutdowns trigger furloughs for all federal employees, except those in essential roles.
Federal workers are not strangers to periodic budget cuts and layoffs. But this shutdown, following on the heels of Trump’s cuts earlier this year to the federal workforce, has workers more on edge given the president’s promise to use the shutdown to further downsize the government.
While federal workers traditionally have been paid when the government reopens, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, said their pocketbooks are affected now: “That’s a real cash flow issue for people.”
More concerning, she said, are Trump’s statements around downsizing during the shutdown.
“That would be illegal,” Smith said.
Sen. Tina Smith said while furloughed workers will eventually be paid, it creates a hole in their budgets now. More concerning, she said, are President Donald Trump’s statements that he will downsize government more during the shutdown. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)
Trump said this week that he believes enacting cuts during the shutdown are within his authority.
“I’m frustrated and sad,” she said. Of 10 IRS agents and assistants in the St. Paul office, she said, only three are left on the payroll after Tuesday.
Nicolette Shegstad’s last day on the federal payroll was Tuesday after she took a buyout. The Internal Revenue Service worker worries that the shutdown will affect paychecks for back pay and benefits. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Ruark Hotopp, a vice president with the Midwest unit of the 800,000 member American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), is skeptical Shegstad and other federal workers in similar positions will ever receive the pay they are owed.
He said AFGE is also concerned there will be permanent cuts during the shutdown.
In January, Minnesota had 33,700 federal workers, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development. In August, the workforce was down to 32,600.
The data does not include the workers like Shegstad whose last day on the federal payroll was Tuesday.
The shutdown, the first in nearly seven years, furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers and disrupted services across the government, including federal court cases, assistance for veterans, grants for education, cleanup at Superfund sites and economic analysis for reports like the jobs data, which is scheduled for release on Friday.