When Jane Doorley and her husband Bill arrived at the Fairborn Fish Food Pantry they help run on 28 October, they couldn’t get into the parking lot, such was the number of cars belonging to people seeking food.
“Our numbers are way up. Last Friday was really bad too,” says Jane. “Around 250 families, including 300 children, come to the pantry every day it’s open.”
The pantry is situated a half mile from Wright-Patterson air force base – the largest single-site employer in Ohio with 38,000 workers – outside Dayton, Ohio, which has been rocked by the federal government shutdown.
With tens of thousands of military personnel working without pay, and local contractors and civilian workers furloughed, the wider regional economy is in trouble.
About 8,100 civilian workers at the Air Force Material Command, headquartered at the Wright-Patterson air force base, have received furlough notices, according to local media.
The effects of this are being starkly seen at food resource centers.
“In September, we were probably averaging 250 families a week. This week, I anticipate we’ll probably help 500 families,” says Doorley.
“We’re seeing this heightened anxiety. You can just feel it when people come. Everybody wants to come at the beginning [of the day], for fear that the food is going to run out.”
For decades, the military has been regarded as a stable source of employment, even through recessions and other economic crises. For a part of the industrial midwest that’s never fully recovered from the collapse of manufacturing activity in the late 20th century, the air force base has been a lifeline, fueling an additional 40,000 off-base, indirect jobs.
Every year, the base generates nearly $16bn for the local economy. Dotted along streets outside the facility, which spans 8,000 acres, are dozens of military-adjacent and defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, GE Aviation and Northrop Grumman, which have provided decades of stable employment, largely through contracts from the federal government that are paid for by taxpayers. Startups such as Joby Aviation have recently flocked to the area to take advantage of access to air force facilities and intellectual property.
But now, local businesses are feeling the full effect of the shutdown.
“We’ve really lost most of our customers because of the government shutdown. It used to be really busy but now it’s empty,” says Tik Taew, who works at Tik’s Thai Express, a restaurant located a short distance from the base that’s been in business for more than 15 years.
“Weekday mornings are usually our busiest time, but right now, it’s really quiet; we’re only getting five to six [customers].”
Across the country, around three-fourths of a million civilians work with the US military. Around half are thought to have been currently furloughed. Reports from the Trump administration made public on 4 November suggested many of those furloughed may not be legible for back-pay, or that it could be used as a negotiating tactic with Democratic party leaders working to end the shutdown.
Democrats have refused to sign a funding deal to end the shutdown unless subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, which provides medical care at a reduced cost for millions of Americans, is renewed into 2026, a measure the White House opposes.
While a last-minute measure late last month saw the Trump administration pull together $5.3bn to ensure military service members were paid on 1 November, avoiding an historic first, experts say service members are unlikely to be paid at the next payroll date if a deal isn’t reached.
“[B]y November 15 our troops and service members who are willing to risk their lives aren’t going to be able to get paid,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told Face the Nation on 26 October.
Polls show that more Americans blame Trump and the Republican party than Democrats for the shutdown, which is now the longest in US history. And yet, a plurality of voters in Ohio, Greene county, where the base is situated, members of the air force and military veterans as a whole, broadly vote for Republican political candidates.
The air force base isn’t the only large military entity in the Dayton area to be closed by the shutdown.
The National Museum of the US Air Force, the world’s largest military aviation museum that’s adjacent to the air force base has also been closed since 1 October. More than 66,000 people from around the country visit the museum every month, adding millions of dollars to the local economy by staying at local hotels and dining at restaurants.
Local county authorities are having to add millions of additional dollars to support food banks. The Dayton Foodbank, which includes a network of 122 local pantries, has delivered 500 emergency food boxes to the base since the start of the shutdown.
“While base civilians, who are still unpaid during the shutdown, might be living above poverty levels while receiving a paycheck, they may not have the funds needed easily available via savings or a credit card in the case of an emergency like now,” says Lee Lauren Truesdale of the Dayton Foodbank.
One local restaurant is offering a $5 menu to military members to help them offset the financial strain. Others are giving away free cooked meals.
“While going unpaid, these civilian employees still must pay day to day expenses such as rent, daycare (to hold spots in anticipation of returning to work), buy food, pay medical bills, car bills [and] utilities.”
All the while, the Trump White House has worked to undermine these groups.
Thousands of pantries across the country, including the Fairborn Fish Food Pantry, used to receive financial support worth a total of $117m through the federal government’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, but that was taken away in January.
“That’s on a pause, probably forever,” says Doorley. “We [now] rely entirely on donations.”
At the Fairborn Fish Food Pantry, which has initiated dedicated days for military families, Doorley says meat is the number one sought after commodity.
“The donations have increased a little bit, but we go and buy meat for 500 families a week. That is not sustainable for us,” she says, adding that it’s time for politicians in Washington DC to find a solution.
“It’s time for the two sides to recognize that we are all Americans and we have people who are hungry and need help. [They need to] get together and somehow find a middle ground to move things forward and help those in our community.”
The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
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