The partial government shutdown, which resulted in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) not having funds for 75 days, has finally come to an end. However, the effects of the shutdown could affect the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for months.
The immediate and noticeable effect of the shutdown was experienced in airports across the United States where a shortage of staff in the TSA resulted in long wait times for passengers. Agents of the TSA are supposed to report to work even when they have not been paid since they are classified as essential workers. Unfortunately, several agents opted to leave the agency in order to get jobs elsewhere that would pay them, leading to understaffing in the TSA. In order to try and fix the situation, President Donald Trump directed the DHS and the Office of Management and Budget to use available funds to pay TSA agents, who reported back to work within the days that followed.
However, numerous TSA agents quit their positions during the shutdown. A spokesperson for TSA informed TIME on Thursday that about 1,110 of TSA officers have quit their positions since the start of the shutdown on Feb. 14. Also, the spokesperson pointed out that new hires will take time as new employees have to go through “4-6 months of training to perform regular airport duties.”
As far as DHS was concerned, the agency highlighted how long new hires will take to train when it reported that more than 1,000 TSA agents had resigned from their posts in a post on X earlier this week by saying, “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 high number of agents leaving their job during the shutdown has alarmed aviation experts. Talking to TIME on Wednesday before the House approved a bill providing funding for most of the work performed by DHS and President Donald Trump signed it into the law, aviation experts expressed concerns about the impact of the shutdown even after it was over.
The number of TSA officers leaving their job during the recent weeks is higher than what is typical for the agency. During 2024, TSA reported a resignation rate of around 8.6%. This works out to an average of about 11 resignations per day, says Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation security and safety expert and professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
"Every day isn't like that – some days might see two resignations, some days there could be 12 – but the average over time ends up being about 11 people per day," he said. In contrast, when one takes into account the 1,110 officers who quit since February 14 as announced by TSA, they would amount to an average of roughly 15 per day.
Additionally, Jacobson noted that the attrition trend wasn't constant throughout the closure period, but showed spikes in recent days, with the number of resigning officers exceeding 830 on April 20 according to the announcement made by the Department of Homeland Security. This figure indicates that more than 280 officers have quit their jobs in less than two weeks since then.
"When you go from a total number of 830 on April 20 and then it rises to 1,110 now, that means that now the rate is over 30 per day. We're seeing some real numbers that indicate reductions of the workforce permanently," stated Jacobson. "This is really problematic."
"And when you start looking at the numbers over a shorter time frame, you begin to see that now people are leaving the organization in significant amounts. They'll keep doing that in three months, four months," he added.
According to Daniel Bubb, a historian of commercial aviation who is a retired pilot and professor in residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, long queues can return to the airports if they are staffed inadequately. However, there is another reason for concern, and it refers to the effects that an insufficient number of employees can have on workers themselves and airport safety overall.
"As you know, now you have fewer TSA agents who still carry very significant responsibilities. They will be required to work even more overtime, and in such circumstances, I would compare it with air traffic controllers where you do not have sufficient number of them, and in such circumstances, you get controllers working overtime, and there they begin making mistakes, and it is exactly what will happen now, because they get tired, start overlooking something," Bubb noted.
Moreover, he pointed out that there is an additional problem for TSA that is associated with its ability to recruit new staff members since the public will consider the position to be highly risky if the officers cannot be paid for many weeks.
It should be remembered that the government experienced a full-scale shutdown some months ago, and this situation resulted in multiple unpaid paychecks for employees at TSA, as well as in all other departments of the federal government. The number of officers leaving their positions amounted to 1,110 in October.
The appropriation bill signed by President Donald Trump Thursday provides funding for all but some parts of DHS and the TSA until September 30. At this point, however, Congress will need to pass another funding bill to continue operations at the department. On the other hand, the impasse over immigration enforcement between the two sides of the government that caused the shutdown last month has not yet been reached; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as portions of the Border Patrol will remain unfunded in this week's bill. Now, Republicans seek an extra $70 billion to support immigration enforcement efforts.
Trump’s executive order in March directing the payment of TSA officers—and then ordering the agency to reinstate wages for all of its employees, using available funding, while the agency was shut down late last month—was the cause behind the employees receiving their wages despite the lack of an agreement by Congress to reopen DHS. However, as recently as last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed that the Department will exhaust its reserves for compensating workers using the above-mentioned method by early May.
"I think just passing a bill itself is not going to be enough," Bubb said in an interview with TIME before the passage of the funding bill. "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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