TSA officers are quitting as a funding standoff forces airport screeners to work without pay

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Eviction notices. Vehicle repossessions. Empty refrigerators and overdrawn bank accounts.

According to union leaders and federal officials, these are among the mounting financial strains that Transportation Security Administration officers face during a government funding lapse — the third in less than six months that has required the people who conduct airport security screenings to work without pay.

The public is experiencing the consequences in long wait times at some airports as more TSA officers take time off to earn money on the side or cut back on expenses. At least 376 have quit their jobs altogether since the latest shutdown began on Valentine's Day, according to the Department of Homeland Security, exacerbating staff turnover at an agency that historically has had some of the U.S. government's highest attrition and lowest employee morale.

“It's just exhausting. Every day it just feels like this weight gets heavier and heavier on us,” Cameron Cochems, a local TSA union leader in Boise, Idaho, told The Associated Press.

Cochems, who has worked as a TSA agent for more than four years and is vice president of his regional American Federation of Government Employees chapter, said the number of resignations likely doesn't fully capture the extent of the agency's personnel challenges. He thinks many more officers would have walked away in a stronger job market.

“I think more people are staying with the TSA that don’t want to be here,” Cochems said.

The ongoing shutdown affects only Homeland Security. The House Committee on Homeland Security has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to review the impact so far on the TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies within the department.

A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that TSA’s workforce has long struggled with some of the lowest morale in the federal government, driven in part by years of comparatively low pay and persistent workplace frustrations. While recent raises have helped, the report said dissatisfaction remained widespread, with officers citing inconsistent management, limited recognition and poor work-life balance.

The starting pay for TSA agents is about $34,500, and the average salary is $46,000 to $55,000, according to the agency's careers website.

The GAO warned that unless those underlying issues were addressed, the risk of officers leaving the workforce was likely to persist.

For Cochems, the recent shutdowns have upended the sense of stability that drew him to federal service in the first place. He said he already works a seasonal side job screening college sports teams at airports to supplement his income. Now, with his TSA paychecks halted, even that isn’t enough to keep up with basic expenses.

The financial pressure on his family intensified after his wife was unexpectedly laid off from her job while his income was on hold.

“Every day I come to the airport and I look at the food drive, see what things I can get for my family,” he said, referring to the donations that his airport, like many others, are soliciting to help TSA workers.

It's unclear how long airport screeners will be required to work while going unpaid. Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to be out of Washington the first two weeks of April. Democrats have said the department won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.

For travelers, the strain in TSA staffing has made airport conditions increasingly unpredictable. Wait times have stretched into hours at some airports, with passengers in cities like Houston, Atlanta and New Orleans reporting delays long enough to miss flights.

TSA officers missed their first full paycheck last weekend, and absences are climbing nationwide, according to Homeland Security. More than half of scheduled staff were absent Sunday at an airport in Houston. At Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, 38% of officers missed work on Wednesday and 32% on Thursday.

“I’ve heard from officers who cannot afford copayments for cancer treatments or office visits for their sick children,” Aaron Barker, a local TSA union leader in Atlanta, said at a news conference outside the airport this week.

Homeland Security has said roughly 50,000 TSA employees would work during the shutdown. Nationwide on Thursday, roughly 10% of TSA agents missed work, the department reported. The absentee rate was two or three times higher in some places: 33% at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, 29% at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, 27% at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and 23% at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

The staffing shortages have also forced some airports to close checkpoints, with wait times swinging dramatically throughout the day in some cases. Early Friday, the main security checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson had two-hour waits before easing to less than five minutes by early afternoon and then jumping back up to 75 minutes.

Security line wait times at George Bush Intercontinental exceeded two hours on Friday afternoon. Videos posted to social media showed lines snaking around the airport and down an escalator, spilling into the baggage claim area.

In a Fox News interview this week, Acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl warned that the shutdown could have lasting consequences for staffing, saying attrition and recruitment would likely suffer. He noted that after the previous shutdown, departures rose 25%, and he expects the situation to get worse unless normal operations resume and TSA officers receive their pay.

“We saw an uptick of 25% attrition after the last shutdown, and so this is going to continue and worsen — not get better, get worse — if we don’t get a resumption of normal operations, DHS funded and money back into our TSA officers’ pockets," he said, adding that the agency has exhausted its options, including deploying emergency manpower, to keep airport security checkpoints adequately staffed.

Former TSA Administrator John Pistole has said that about 1,100 officers quit during last year’s record 43-day shutdown that ended in November.