Sometimes she takes a tote bag filled with dirty clothes to work to take to the laundromat afterward, she said, because the machines at the shelter are always either broken or being used.

But, she said, there is no escaping the noise and fitful sleep of a dormitory shared with eight other women.

Like most homeless employed people interviewed for this article, Barbara did not want to be identified by her full name for fear of losing her privacy or her job. She has been homeless since 2011, she said, when her unemployment insurance ran out and she could no longer afford her apartment in Brooklyn. No one at work knows, she said.

“When it comes to the professional arena, I want people to think that I got it together, that I’m not living paycheck to paycheck, that my only option isn’t to buy secondhand,” she said.

Sometimes homeless workers discover one another.

Deirdre Cunningham, 21, who works two part-time jobs — as a bank teller and as a sales clerk for an electronics store in Manhattan, said that at one point a co-worker at the store invited her to an evening event. “I said, ‘I can’t go, because I have curfew,’ and this co-worker said, ‘What do you mean curfew?’ ”

“I said, ‘I live in a shelter,’ and she said, ‘I do, too.’ ”

Ms. Cunningham, who has a 4-year-old daughter, said she has always been open about her struggles. “A lot of people have problems, too,” she said.