For the past four years, the 24-year-old Silver Springs, Maryland, resident worked as a market research analyst for the Department of Commerce. “My uncle is a government employee, and I just saw how much pride that he took in his job. And I was like, ‘I want a job that’s like that,’” Kerksick said. But since the October government shutdown, Kerksick has been furloughed, which means she’s one of the estimated 750,000 federal workers across the United States who are on an indefinite unpaid leave of absence. “At first I thought this was just going to be a week,” Kerksick said, so she took a week of paid time off.
