PHOENIX — On the 25th day of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office took to Twitter to try to entice furloughed federal employees to come work for them.
The sheriff's office tweeted that it is hiring deputy sheriffs and detention officers and that, unlike the federal government, Maricopa County won't shut down.
The tweet also included that Maricopa County Sheriff's Office pays as much as $65,000 a year. According to Glassdoor, TSA officers make an average salary of about $40,000.
Pensions and tuition reimbursements were also listed as benefits in the tweet.
Last Friday, many of the estimated 800,000 federal employees working through the government shutdown missed a paycheck. The shutdown is forcing some workers to scale back spending, apply for unemployment benefits and take out loans to compensate for the missing paychecks.
St. Mary's Food Bank brought supplies Monday directly to a Phoenix TSA office.
“TSA is not one of the high-paying jobs when it comes to government employees, so they’re kind of in that most vulnerable positions where one or two missed paychecks really has an impact on their lives,” St. Mary's spokesperson Jerry Brown told 12 News.
The government shutdown, which was started over funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, has no end in sight despite bipartisan meetings.