Typically people do not go to work while living on their emergency fund. That is why it doesn't sit well when we tell the government employees that they should be living off their hard-earned savings while they work for us for free. It's not an emergency, it's madness.

To some extent, people work for the government because of the stability. You are not going to wake up one morning to find that the United States Government is out of business, so an emergency fund seems less essential than if you were working at a startup with 3 employees.

With government work no longer being considered more stable or reliable than the private sector, the one advantage that the government has used to recruit workers and pay them less than average is gone. That means government work is going to go un-done, or they're going to have to start paying employees more to make up for the risk. That only hurts us taxpayers.