With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now, they are confronting new uncertainty with the administration's promised layoffs.

Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with both parties digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is one of several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and Republican leaders have said that the government must reopen before they will negotiate with Democrats on the health subsidies.

Peter Farruggia is the head of the American Federation of Government Employees local representing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees who have been furloughed from the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online.

"So, to just not know um is is really scary and you know I mean luckily I paid my rent this month but probably a lot of my other bills are gonna go unpaid," Farruggia said.

The Republican administration last week warned that there would be no guaranteed back pay for federal workers during a shutdown — a reversal of long-standing policy affecting roughly 750,000 furloughed employees, according to a White House memo. The move, which Trump later backtracked on, was widely seen as a strong-arm tactic.