Day: October 19, 2025

• Eleven Madison Park, which has three Michelin stars, reintroduced meat to its menu this week.
• It shifted to a plant-based menu in 2021, but said it is now trying to be more “inclusive.”
• We visited the restaurant to see how its $365 tasting menu has changed.

Light streamed through the large windows, accompanied by hushed conversation and the gentle clink of cutlery as we arrived at Eleven Madison Park.

We dined at the three-Michelin-star restaurant on the opening night of its revamped menu as it shifted away from its strictly plant-based identity.

After its bold leap into a fully plant-based format in 2021, the restaurant, which first opened in 1998, is pivoting again, reintroducing select meat and fish options, including its signature honey-lavender duck.

The shift — welcomed by some, slammed as a money grab by others— was framed as a way to offer a wider range of choices to diners.

“Eating together is the essence of who we are, and I’ve learned that for me to truly champion plant-based cooking, I need to create an environment where everyone feels welcome around the table,” wrote chef and owner Daniel Humm when announcing the change in August.

The announcement left one of Business Insider’s editors reeling. Lydia Warren, a vegan for almost a decade, had long admired Humm’s outspoken commitment to plant-based dining and his role in proving it could be considered upscale. She bristled at how the change was heralded as a sign “the protein bros have won.”

Warren wasn’t alone. It appears that some staff members at Eleven Madison Park were upset by the change, Business Insider has learned.

One server we spoke with said some vegan staff members were disappointed when the change was announced publicly in August, but that none had left the restaurant as a result. Staff learned about the chef’s plans to reintroduce meat to the menu at the same time as everyone else, they added.

Eleven Madison Park declined to comment.

Still, on October 14, the opening night of the menu relaunch, Warren and another reporter, Erin McDowell, who eats meat, went to see how the restaurant was approaching its new edict.

As a vegan and a meat-eater seated side by side, did Eleven Madison Park’s new menu bridge the gap?

On the first night of the updated menu, the dining room buzzed with excitement.

When we arrived for our 5:45 p.m. reservation, we gave the hostess our name and were immediately shown to our table. We noticed how the Eleven Madison Park team was well-oiled.

There was no need to check an iPad for our reservation — it was as if they had memorized the names of every reservation and were expecting us.

When we were seated at a plush corner table in the cavernous dining room inside the unassuming yet glamorous Art Deco-style building, one staff member informed us that bookings were filling up quickly — faster, even, than when Eleven Madison Park first introduced its plant-based menu.

In fact, the restaurant was fully booked on the night of our visit, and the next available slot was at 10:30 p.m., five days later.

Guests can still order a completely plant-based tasting menu or opt for the new menu, which features both plant-based and meat options.

Of the eight courses we tried, three could feature meat and seafood if we wished. As such, Warren opted for the fully plant-based menu, while McDowell asked for the meat options.

The cost of the tasting menu was $365 per person, which was paid for in advance when we made our reservation. Any drink purchases and the tip were added to the total.

Eleven Madison Park offers a selection of signature cocktails, an extensive wine list, and mocktails.

At our table, McDowell began the night with a dirty gin martini ($22).

The server was attentive, asking what kind of gin she’d like, and happily accommodated her request to have more olive brine in the drink.

It was perfectly cold and just the right amount of “dirty.”

Our vegan reporter ordered a mocktail.

The apple blossom mocktail ($18) featured the alcohol-free aperitif Everleaf Mountain, a tequila alternative, Seedlip Notas de Agave, along with blue malva flowers, dragonfruit, lemon, and aquafaba.

It was the aquafaba that made this cocktail particularly intriguing. The starchy liquid left over from cooking chickpeas or beans is often used as a stand-in for eggs in plant-based baking, or, in this case, egg whites.

It created a froth that held its shape atop the fruity, candy-like mocktail.

When we sat down at our table, we were given warm towels for our hands.

This simple gesture set the tone for our meal, allowing us to fully relax before diving into the tasting menu.

The first course was two laminated bread rolls, onion butter, and a roasted onion broth.

The laminated bread looked more similar to a pastry than a traditional bread roll we typically get at restaurants.

It had a luminous golden crust that gleamed under the restaurant’s low lights.

This was the best restaurant bread either of us had ever had.

The caramelized onion flavor came through in a symphony of flavor, while the perfectly airy middle was stretchy and fluffy, balancing out the flaky, salty crust.

Despite knowing we had many more courses coming, we both wished we had been given more bread and onion butter, as we were still thinking about this course by the end of the meal.

The second course was a leek salad, which was beautifully presented.

The marinated leeks, perched atop an aioli and dusted with tiny Os of cilantro stems, were exquisitely plated. Each bite was delicate and delightfully acidic, finished with a touch of fat from the aioli.

The leeks practically melted in our mouths.

“This was a dish unlike anything I’ve had at any other restaurant,” said McDowell, who eats meat. “It was experimental, yet still approachable — even if you’re not a truly adventurous eater, I’m convinced anyone would enjoy most of the courses on the tasting menu.”

With the leek salad course, we were also each given a steamed collard green dumpling.

The dumpling — brought to the table in a small wooden box — was savory and perfectly pillowy, while the collard greens gave it an earthy flavor.

It was served in a soy-sauce broth that we sipped afterward.

Next was the first course to feature a type of meat.

McDowell received a scallop ceviche made with golden beets and grapefruit.

The first bite was a quiet surprise: the scallop’s silkiness gave way to a bright, citrusy rush from the grapefruit.

This dish exemplified how Eleven Madison Park is reimagining its menu.

The raw scallop, sourced from Prince Edward Island in Canada, was the star of this dish — buttery and unbelievably fresh — but it was the plant-based elements that elevated it and made it truly memorable.

The brightness of the grapefruit and the slightly earthy sweetness of the beets made this dish a true showstopper.

The plant-based option was a radish salad.

As McDowell received her scallops, Warren was presented another artful plate: an exquisite flower of radish and apple discs, dotted with mustard seeds and horseradish.

While it was a feast for the eyes, the acidity felt similar to the leek course, and it might have been more welcome later in the meal, between some of the heavier, saltier courses.

Up next was a cold course of soba noodles in a tomato broth.

Our waiter explained that the dishes would alternate between warm and cold to create a contrast throughout the tasting menu.

The soba noodles were served in a tomato broth made with confit tomatoes, Thai basil, sesame seeds, garlic, scallions, shallots, and saffron for garnish.

The noodles were hearty, with most of the flavor coming from the tomato broth.

The texture of the broth was slightly gelatinous, like it was made from the juice that you get when you slice into a ripe tomato.

The noodles were starchy and easy to pick up with the provided chopsticks.

We were encouraged to drink the clear broth afterward, but it was so rich that we only managed a couple of sips.

The fifth course was a choice of butter-poached lobster or red kuri squash.

The lobster was plated beneath a thin, golden disc of squash, its surface glistening under the dining room’s soft light, and accompanied by a side of tender kale.

The portion was modest, but every bite counted. The lobster was tender and sweet, its richness lifted by the squash’s nut notes.

The colors of the lobster dish complemented those of the plant-based option.

While McDowell tucked into the lobster, Warren savored a slab of red kuri squash, topped with chili jam, and bathed in a lemongrass curry.

After enjoying the tender squash, she scooped up the curry with a spoon.

This was another dish where the seasoning was ramped up, and the hint of sweet jam helped cut through those salty, savory flavors.

The next course offered some theatrics.

The dish was plated tableside by our waiter, who revealed smoked potatoes from inside a gourd-shaped vessel.

This was among our favorite courses of the evening.

The sixth course was potatoes three ways: a smoked hasselback potato, potato purée, chive blossom crema, a dusting of powdered potato, and the restaurant’s famous “land caviar,” made from seeds.

Each bite was bursting with flavor.

Each layer of the sliced potato fell apart effortlessly, bringing a salty yet buttery flavor to each bite.

The land caviar, seasoned with nori, didn’t mimic the taste of traditional caviar but added a pleasing textural contrast to the dish.

Up next was the dish our meat-eating reporter couldn’t wait for: the famous honey-lavender duck.

Eleven Madison Park’s honey lavender-glazed duck isn’t just another dish on the restaurant’s menu — it’s a symbol of the restaurant itself.

Created early in Humm’s tenure, it quickly became one of EMP’s most iconic offerings and stayed on the menu for years, virtually untouched.

The duck had a crispy, crackling skin and was served with plum sauce.

With each bite, the duck revealed layers of flavor: crisp skin, succulent meat, and a depth that stopped our non-vegan reporter in her tracks.

“I’ve had duck plenty of times in my day, but never like this,” McDowell said.

The final meat course certainly lived up to the hype.

Once described by Humm as a “perfected” recipe, the duck certainly lived up to all the expectations.

It was unbelievably tender, with notes of floral lavender and sweet honey coming together to create a dish that was well-balanced and clearly thought out.

“I’m still dreaming about it,” McDowell said.

At first, we thought the plant-based option had been placed in front of the wrong person.

The maitake mushroom entrée looked so much like meat, it seemed there had been a mix-up. This was one of the first protein-dense ingredients in the plant-based tasting menu.

Tender layers of grilled mushrooms were interspliced with squares of seitan, a meat alternative made from wheat gluten. The kebab-like entrée was served with spinach.

This umami-packed dish was a great example of how satisfying plant-based dining can be.

It was unlike anything our vegan editor had tried before in almost a decade of being vegan — its ingenuity and combination of textures made it a satisfying and memorable dish.

It was, however, yet another heavily seasoned dish, so the additions of spinach and crema helped balance out those salty flavors.

While Warren is somewhat accustomed to seeing people eat meat, the worst part of this course — and the entire meal — was seeing the duck dish and feeling a sense of anger and sadness. To her, it spoke to how EMP is alienating its original core base.

The dessert course was a trio featuring pear.

The course was a poached pear that contained a type of pudding inside, along with a ball of caramelized white chocolate.

The course was sweet and the perfect way to wind down the meal, without being too heavy or decadent.

The final course was a sesame pretzel with chocolate.

Served alongside coffee, it was the perfect end to the meal — especially since, after eight other courses, we both felt extraordinarily stuffed.

We were also given a tub of the restaurant’s famous granola to take home with us, intended for breakfast the next morning.

Three and a half hours later, we paid the bill and ended our once-in-a-lifetime experience at Eleven Madison Park.

Despite costing a total of $855.76 before tip, we both felt the experience was well worth the investment. Every dish was memorable, from balanced yet exciting flavors to the presentation and bigger-than-expected portion sizes.

Eleven Madison Park’s pivot back to meat may be provocative, but we could see Humm’s vision playing out: It seems capable of getting meat-eaters in the door and then opening their minds to experimenting with more plant-based dishes. After all, vegetables still felt like the backbone of the menu and experience.

McDowell said she enjoyed all three of the meat-based dishes she was served, but would likely have been just as satisfied with the plant-based tasting menu.

“I’d be much more open to eating at a vegan restaurant after this experience,” she said.

That was the most thrilling part of the experience for Warren: that her dinner date realized just how inventive, delicious, and satisfying plant-based dining can be.

“I’d obviously prefer Eleven Madison Park to stay completely vegan,” Warren said, “but if an experience like this shows meat-eaters how fun and delicious plant-based food is, and they are open to eating less meat as a result, that’s progress.”

• Michael Salvatore has had to make some business changes due to tariffs and uncertainties.
• He has raised the price of coffee drinks and will evaluate whether other items need to be changed.
• While COVID was a hard time to operate, he thinks this period rivals that.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Salvatore, 44, the founder of Heritage Hospitality Group, a company with a few bars and coffee shops in Chicago. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I own Heritage Hospitality Group in Chicago, and we’ve been around since 2011. It started as a bicycle manufacturing company, and I paired that with a café. I did that for a few years as I pursued my interests throughout the hospitality industry. We now have five different brands: Froth, Heritage Outpost, Heritage Bikes & Coffee, Larry’s, and Bunker.

I love the customers. I love solving the problems that arise. I love experimenting with food. I love coming up with new drinks. I love my employees, and the interactions I have with everybody I get to work with.

My teenager is now working at the shop as a dishwasher. That’s so fun to see. We started this company when he was several months old.

It’s always been about the people, it’s always been about the hospitality, and that keeps me going. I love it.

COVID was one of the hardest points in my life operating a business. Everything was uncertain, and everything was shut down. We paused, we took a break, and figured it out.

Now, it feels like everything’s uncertain, but no one’s giving it the attention it needs. The current moment with inflation and policy uncertainty is starting to rival running a business during COVID.

It feels like tariffs are hitting almost every aspect of the business

Any bicycle parts, anything coming from overseas, that’s getting hit, whether it’s tariffs or lack of inventory at this point, because the wholesalers don’t have it either. Coffee bean prices have obviously gone up. Tariffs on South America, Brazil in particular, have carried that weight of the tariffs.

Even things like cups, paper goods, anything that we rely on — essentially, nothing’s manufactured in the States. It’s a global economy, so everything gets hit.

The biggest issue is not knowing what is going on. You can’t operate a business with uncertainty.

Every day is a win or a loss, and you can’t really run a business that way. This uncertainty creates this temperature where I’m going to hold off on any major decisions because I don’t know how that’s going to affect my bottom line tomorrow.

The uncertainty stems from a few factors. It’s tariffs, it’s political, it’s immigration, it’s labor. We’re going into the slow season. That’s going to be uncertain. I’m frozen for at least six months.

It’s like we’re operating in a hurricane with all these things flying in our faces, and we’re just trying to make sure that the kitchen’s open and the coffee’s warm.

We just raised prices a few weeks ago, although I didn’t want to

Tariffs are a key reason. But we’re also raising prices due to across-the-board cost increases: labor, insurance, coffee, paper goods. Everything is up. Tariffs were the tipping point.

We’re raising prices in stages, starting with coffee. Next, we’re looking at pastries, packaged drinks, and eventually our food menu. We’re reviewing item by item over the next two months and adjusting where the margin hit is greatest. We’re not taking a blanket approach — it’s strategic and staged.

At Froth, we raised the price of a cappuccino from $4.50 to $4.75. A 12-ounce drip coffee went from $3.00 to $3.15. A cold brew went from $4.75 to $5.00. At Heritage Bikes & Coffee, a cortado went from $4.25 to $4.50. Most changes were in that 5% range, rounded up.

I don’t want to bombard everybody, but it needs to be done. Right now, we are just increasing prices on coffee drinks, where we lost a ton of margin, and I needed to recoup some of that. So that’s where the first step was. We’ll continue to do that throughout the next few months and slowly but surely raise prices where it makes sense.

Raising prices is really hard for me. It’s been years since I’ve done that for coffee. It needed to be done because I see that we’re making more revenue, but we have less margin for any profit to pay our folks.

I have a hard time raising prices on my customers, who come in and spend their money on a coffee, bike, service, beer, or food. Growing up, we didn’t really go out of our way to go out to coffee or go to the local restaurants. So I know how special that can be. I’ve always wanted that to be within striking distance of most people.

We debated announcing the increase widely by email, but ultimately decided to explain it directly when asked, which felt more aligned with how we do things.

Reactions have been surprisingly quiet. Most people haven’t noticed or haven’t said anything. A few regulars asked about the change, and when we explained it was tariff and cost-related, they nodded and moved on. I think people generally understand that everything is getting more expensive.

When I look at what our margins are and how thin they’ve become in order to operate, I’ve had to raise those prices.

We’ve had to make some drawbacks on staff

We cut staff in September due to tariffs, but also to streamline operations in response to thinning margins.

There are some key points where we thought we could run more efficiently. Our margin for labor, it should be a certain point, a certain percentage of your income. We couldn’t meet that.

We made operational changes focused on efficiency — eliminating overlapping shifts, reducing prep cook hours, and cutting a few key middle-management roles like kitchen manager, events, and social media.

I’d love to be able to have someone on social media and marketing. It would help business, but I don’t think it would help it enough to make up for their salary at this point.

We implemented a hiring freeze in late September due to tariffs and economic uncertainty more broadly. We’re being extremely selective so while there may be a few specific roles open (like event-based or part-time), we’ve halted active recruiting across the company.

Despite having one of our best years in terms of revenue, our net profit is smaller

People are coming in. People are buying. Even with that, even with great revenue coming in, because coffee prices went up, because paper goods went up, because labor went up, because insurance went up, every line item in our expense sheet has gone up.

When you’re operating at thin margins as it is, those matter hugely. So if you’re talking about every expense that’s gone up throughout your QuickBooks account, no matter how much revenue comes in, unless you have an incredible year, you can’t keep up with the expenses unless you raise your prices.

As a group, as a management, we talk about finances weekly. We’re planning for those slower months, making sure that we are realistic about the hours we can provide for our staff. We’re realistic about what we can offer, what we can buy, just trying to run a skeleton operation until we understand where the other side of this is. I’m not necessarily going to have to take out loans or anything.

I always try to operate within our revenues. As long as we can do that week to week, we keep track of what’s going on week to week, we make sure we’re running cost of goods, labor within line of a certain formula, we’ll be OK. But it’s going to get thin for sure.

How have tariffs or other factors affected your business? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

It started with coding. Generative AI’s aptitude for writing code was the death knell for traditional software development, and companies wanted “vibe” coders. Big Tech execs have been praising the vibes this year: Sundar Pichai is vibe coding a web page, Mark Zuckerberg says AI is coming for mid-level engineering work, and Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says he’s become an amateur coder thanks to vibe coding. Startups are vibe-coding their way into existence.

Now, more of the corporate world is vibing. A small number of companies are seeking applicants for job titles like “Vibe Growth Manager,” who are tasked with experimenting with AI and building marketing prototypes faster. Last month, Microsoft rolled out what it’s calling “vibe working,” which involves using agentic tools in Excel and Word that can generate documents and spreadsheets. It lets people without deep knowledge of spreadsheets “speak Excel,” or “vibe write” in Word by generating, refining, and asking the author questions as they go. Mea’s AI app now has a “vibes” feed for AI-generated video, and Sora’s AI video platform is giving rise to what some are calling “vibe creators” — no longer traditional influencer content, but a new type of influence created by synthetic AI imagery and a few clicks.

Welcome to the vibening, where a lot of white-collar work is being portrayed as just vibes. The term is shorthand for using generative AI to do the tedious and strenuous parts of a project, but it also conveys the idea that work is free-flowing, improvised, and easy. Vibing is a sort of Gen Z take on hygge, slang that was once reserved for chilling with friends or describing a date gone right and has now seeped its way into corporate speak. Managers hold regular “vibe checks” with their direct reports. Some companies have played with a “Chief Vibe Officer” title. Smirnoff announced Troye Sivan into the role as part of a promotional partnership last year, and software company Atlassian nominated a rotating CVO in an attempt to grow bonds between teams.

But vibe working is still work. Working with AI, and doing it well, takes experimentation and expertise. The rise of talk of vibing at work may obfuscate the value of mastering concepts and skills, or the term could be the bat signal of a company seeking energetic workers who want to experiment. If it’s an attempt by companies and executives to convey they’re open to AI and hip, the imprecise language and experimentation can be a recipe for confusion. “Everyone might have a different interpretation of what the vibe is,” says Ben Armstrong, the executive director of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center. “One person’s good vibe could be the other person’s bad vibe.”

So what happens when the vibes are bad?

It’s not surprising to see the idea of vibe work gaining traction, as Gen Z sees the parameters of work with blurrier lines. From the lazy girl job to quiet quitting, there’s less formality in the workplace, and young people are less interested in workplace loyalty and less dependent on the 9 to 5. Workers feel disengaged with corporate culture, so a rebrand to the gentler idea of vibing could be an attempt to attract workers to a less rigid workplace. “I imagine to this particular demographic of people, that’s very appealing: work being about vibing more than it’s about analyzing or synthesizing or reporting, which I don’t think sounds particularly artistic or creative or collaborative or beautiful,” says Emily DeJeu, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. But the term “hides the extent to which it is work,” DeJeu says. If executives rebrand work as a “vibe,” it may undercut the necessary expertise needed to do a job. That could become exploitative if bosses rely on workers’ mastery of skills but simultaneously write off the value of work performed alongside AI. DeJeu likens vibe coding or working to jazz. A performance might be largely improvised and seem effortless to the listener, but that vibing on the spot only works because musicians have spent years mastering theory before taking steps to mess it all up. “Labor is labor, and the labor to build expertise is laborious,” she says. The idea that you can vibe and “you don’t have to spend all that time and it’s not hard, is kind of laughable in my opinion.”

Vibe working is still work.

Vibing hasn’t been the silver bullet for coding some expected. There’s been a frenzy for AI-generated code, and OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy coined the process as vibe coding. The concept has thrown the software developer role into a new era — the nature of work done by many has shifted from writing code to an emphasis on reviewing AI-generated code for bugs, and coders aren’t necessarily saving time.

The trend has caught on, and employers are hungry for employees who know how to use AI. They’re eager to deploy cost savings and find the productivity gains touted by AI evangelists. Even though most companies aren’t training people to use AI, they want workers who get it: 71% percent of business leaders say they would take a job seeker with less experience who has AI skills over a more experienced worker who doesn’t know how to use AI, according to a 2024 report from Microsoft. Two-thirds say they wouldn’t hire someone without AI knowledge. But less than a third of workers have received company training to use AI, according to a survey of workers conducted by Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit focused on transforming the workforce. There’s a big gap in what companies want in terms of AI and how they’re able to convey that and train their workers.

To cope, workers have jumped on AI themselves. Learning about the tech is often happening bottom-up from workers rather than top-down through training. Workers are experimenting in ways that aren’t always tracked, so the best practices are being built just as the tech’s limitations are discovered. “Because a vibe is so open to interpretation, it’s so hard to measure what the outcome of these different tasks might be,” Armstrong says. We’re in a time similar to the early days of the internet, he says, when people were experimenting and developing different types of web interfaces. With AI tools, people are “figuring out when they’re going to be effective, when they’re going to be reliable.” All of that vibing can create vastly different processes with varying degrees of success that also prove hard to replicate.

When people vibework too hard, when they use generative AI without thought, they can produce mounds of workslop, or neatly prepared decks and memos that are often lengthy but lack useful information. “As you have an idea, you should also have your strategy and your objectives, and then you should use AI to help you flush out the idea,” says Emilie DiFranco, vice president of marketing at the firm Marketri. DiFranco says AI is helpful for marketers because it can review and consolidate data, but relying too heavily on AI without the right endgame for a marketing strategy in mind could get messy. “I am a little worried about losing the human aspect of creating that initial strategy and the objectives,” she says. Marketers should be “not just rolling off a vibe, but making sure there’s research, making sure you have those foundational elements before you engage with AI to start helping you put the plan together.”

Vibing is in vogue right now. As companies and execs move quickly to capitalize on the idea, it could turn cringe. But work is still work, and trying to throw a fun twist on how we talk about it or putting generative AI tools in the mix doesn’t mean employers aren’t demanding a lot from their workers.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• The government shut down on October 1, leaving federal workers furloughed or working without pay.
• Dozens of workers told Business Insider they’re financially strained as the shutdown approaches its third week.
• They’re dipping into savings, delaying car repairs, canceling kids’ activities, and applying for loans.

The federal government shutdown has become the Grinch who stole Halloween for Johnny Jones.

Halloween is typically a big deal for the Jones family — they love to decorate, hand out candy and hot dogs, and enjoy a neighborhood shindig. But Jones, who works for the Transportation Security Administration, isn’t getting a paycheck during the shutdown. That means big Halloween plans are out of the budget; so is an outing for his daughter and her friends to the new Taylor Swift movie.

“We’re probably another couple of weeks from having to prepare to start selling stuff. I’ve already started identifying things that I could liquidate easily to get cash,” said Jones, who is the president of local 1040 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union.

Across the country, government workers like Jones are cutting back on subscriptions, canceling vacations, skipping car repairs, pausing kids’ dance classes, and delaying credit card payments.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed or are working without pay amid the shutdown, while the Trump administration pushes through new staff cuts. Most employees received one final prorated check this week for the days worked immediately before the shutdown; it could be their last until Congress reaches a funding deal. The same goes for government contractors, which include people working in cafeteria and janitorial roles at federal buildings, on Capitol Hill, and at national museums and historical sites.

Business Insider interviewed more than two dozen workers across agencies and the military. Some said they are dipping into savings, while others worry they won’t be able to afford medicine and rent next month. The White House has hinted that furloughed workers and those still on the job may not receive back pay. Meanwhile, thousands of federal employees who received termination notices since the start of the shutdown are left in limbo after an October 15 court ruling temporarily paused their layoffs.

‘I won’t have enough savings to pay for the bills’

Federal workers told Business Insider that one check can be the difference between paying a bill or going into debt.

A Pew analysis showed that nearly half of government employees earned under $89,000 annually as of March 2024, with 8% earning less than $50,000 — money that goes fast if families are paying for housing, childcare, groceries, and medicine.

“A lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck, like most Americans, but even more so now we have to be cognizant of where every penny is going,” Mark Cochran, a furloughed National Park Service employee in Pennsylvania and AFGE Local 3145 president, previously told Business Insider.

One civilian Department of Defense worker has been hitting the phones: They’ve reached out to their mortgage company and two major banks to see if they can get a loan or forbearance. So far, prospects have been grim.

“My pay covers me through October but if the shutdown continues past October into November I won’t have enough savings to pay for the bills,” the DoD worker said. It’s been a stressful time, they said, as they scramble to get last-minute credit card and loan applications together. They’ve already applied for a bridge loan from the United States Senate Federal Credit Union. “I just wished that we could get more financial support from these public companies (even major ones) when it was not our fault.”

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee said they are trying to secure a mortgage loan approval this month, but “that fell through because of the missing paycheck,” and a National Aeronautics and Space Administration employee said that they’re delaying repairs to their roof and car. One Internal Revenue Service worker said medical challenges would become “drastically more expensive” if they lost their job. Another IRS employee said they’re anxious about making credit card and loan payments.

Cochran and others added that they are worried about how their diminished spending will impact small businesses in their community. A few said they are working with colleagues to organize food drives or apply for SNAP and unemployment benefits.

Just days after the shutdown began, unemployment claims in DC started to spike, while an analysis by The Century Foundation found that around 10,500 federal workers across the country have filed for unemployment since the shutdown began.

Many are looking for stopgaps, too. USAA, which offers interest-free loans equivalent to paychecks for impacted federal workers, said that they’ve approved and funded nearly $243 million for around 65,000 loans in the first week of opening the program. The Maryland Department of Labor received more than 550 applications between October 6 and October 14 for its federal worker loans. And the Navy Federal Credit Union, which offers a similar program, said that they’re “seeing a significant uptick in participation.”

“It’s very difficult for me to advocate to an employee, ‘Hey, take a loan out so you can come to work,'” Jones, the AFGE local 1040 president, said.

‘The ground has been shaken beneath us’

Layered on the paycheck uncertainty is whether workers will even have jobs to return to.

A filing from the Office of Management and Budget on October 10 indicated that between 4,132 and 4,232 federal workers were marked for layoffs, with some receiving RIF notices that day. Administration sources told Business Insider that the numbers in the filing are “just a snapshot in time” and OMB head Russell Vought said during an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show that the layoffs will total about 10,000.

For now, those planned cuts are paused by a court order, and the administration cannot legally enforce layoffs for employees who have already received notices or continue issuing new terminations.

At one agency in particular, employees are feeling whiplash. A few hundred workers at the Centers for Disease Control received RIF notices at the end of last week, then were told over the weekend that they could remain in their posts. An HHS spokesperson told Business Insider that some employees received incorrect notifications and “are not subject to the reduction in force.” The CDC union confirmed that “around 700 employees received emails rescinding their illegal terminations. More than 600 workers remain unjustly fired.”

A few CDC workers told Business Insider that this lack of job security is having a tangible impact on their lives and financial planning.

“We have an emergency cushion, but I am concerned about how long it’s going to go on,” one laid-off CDC worker — who wasn’t called back — said, “We have talked about selling our house if we need to. We’ve also talked about tapping into retirement savings as a very last resort.”

Another CDC employee mistakenly received the layoff email. They said they’re the breadwinner for their family, and have considered cutting back on activities for their kids and applying for an emergency loan. Over the past eight months of DOGE firings and the government shutdown, the employee said they have had “pretty charged conversations about what our life is going to look like” with their spouse.

“I guess it was a bit of relief if I still have a job and I know where my next paycheck is going to come from when the shutdown ends,” they said, “But the ground has been shaken beneath us.”

Over 200,000 federal workers have lost their jobs, and thousands more have left their government posts through retirement, buyouts, quits, and deferred resignations since Trump took office in January.

Senate Democrats and Republicans have not yet reached a funding agreement to end the government shutdown. “The Trump Administration is encouraging the Democrats to stop the pain and reopen the government with the bipartisan funding proposal they supported just 6 months ago and 13 times under Biden,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, previously told Business Insider.

Until then, some employees are draining their bank accounts to show up for unpaid shifts until they can’t afford it anymore.

“Gas stations don’t take IOUs. I talked to a couple employees, they said, ‘this is my last fill-up and I won’t have any money,’ because they don’t have credit cards,” Jones said. “They’re literally like, this is the last tank of gas I’m going to have until I get paid again. I was like, this is just too much. People are asking like, ‘Hey, I’d love to come work — but may not have gas money.'”

Alice Tecotzky and Taylor Rains contributed reporting.