Congress gets paid during a government shutdown. What about the janitors?

Many federal government employees will forgo paychecks if the government shuts down Oct. 1. But that won’t be the case for lawmakers, a liberal podcaster said.

"If the government shuts down, members of Congress still get paid," said Dan Koh, host of "The People’s Cabinet" podcast in a clip he posted Sept. 29 on X. "The janitors never get paid."

Koh, who worked as deputy assistant to former President Joe Biden, said in the clip that almost all janitors who work on federal property are employed by private contractors.

"There is no obligation, and Donald Trump, I guarantee you, has no intention of paying these janitors if the government shuts down," Koh said. "So they get completely screwed. There is no back pay. They just get no money."

Democrats and Republicans are in a battle over whether to extend expiring subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and reverse Medicaid cuts in must-pass legislation. If not resolved, it could lead to a government shutdown.

Who gets paid and who doesn’t when the government shuts down? 

Congress receives its pay 

Congress does get paid during a shutdown. Lawmakers have repeatedly proposed bills that would stop that practice, but those measures have not become law. 

Members of Congress are not subject to furlough because of their constitutional responsibilities. Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution says, "Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States." Member salaries have been provided by a permanent, mandatory appropriation for decades.

Most representatives and senators are paid $174,000 a year. The only exceptions include the House speaker, who receives $223,500 annually, and the Senate president pro tempore and the majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate, who are each paid $193,400 a year.

Contractors are not guaranteed pay

Employees are not paid during a shutdown, including those who are deemed essential and must report to work. These include many immigration enforcement workers and Transportation Security Administration agents at airports.

A 2019 federal law says employees furloughed as a result of a lapse in appropriations as well as those required to work without pay receive back pay. But the law makes no mention of contractors. 

What about Koh’s assertion that janitors "never" get paid amid a shut down? We found no definitive information on janitors employed by contractors, but labor and employment lawyers and federal budget experts said contractors are often not paid.

Jim Malatras, chief strategy officer at The Fedcap Group, a nonprofit that has federal janitorial and custodial contracts that employ people with disabilities, told PolitiFact that the company will continue to pay its employees if there’s a government shutdown "while we have the funding to do so." 

Charlotte Hoffman, spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said not every contracted employee automatically gets furloughed without pay. It’s up to each federal agency to stop its contracts; most are stopped. Contracting companies can choose whether to continue to pay their employees. Most janitors are contracted and face furloughs, but that situation may not apply to every person who works on a federal contract, Hoffman said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that tracks federal spending, recently wrote that "federal contractors have historically not received back pay." The group added that "federal contractors sometimes include premiums in their bids to account for uncertainty in being paid."

Most contractor employees are not considered by the federal government to be essential, and the contractor decides whether to allow them to take paid time off or use furloughs or layoffs, said Nichole D. Atallah, a partner at PilieroMazza law firm in Washington, D.C. 

"The government generally does not pay contractors for wages employees would have otherwise earned had they worked," Atallah said.

JacksonLewis, a national employment and labor law firm, wrote in 2023 that past government shutdowns have led to a permanent loss of income for many federal government contractors. 

Lawyers caution that not every contract is the same. 

The government has said in the past that in the absence of appropriations, agencies must limit obligations to those needed to protect life and property. 

In 2023, some Senate Democrats including Smith proposed a bill to pay federal contractors some back pay, but it did not advance. Smith is working on a similar proposal in the event of a shutdown.

Our ruling

Koh said, "If the government shuts down, members of Congress still get paid. The janitors never get paid."

Members of the House and Senate continue to get paid during a shutdown. Federal law says that federal employees get back pay, but the law does not extend that to contractors, a group that includes many janitors. Some private employers with federal contracts may find ways to pay their employees, but there is nothing in federal law that requires it.

We rate this statement Mostly True.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.

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