LAst year, my wife took a 10% pay cut, followed by another 5% cut later in the year. Also the next 18 months, no money goes into her retirement, so the next 18 months don’t count toward her retirement.
It could be worse for your wife.
You (her) should be able to make individual contributions to your 401k or your IRA over those 18 months. I’m in the private sector and we dropped matching so any retirement contribution is strictly up to me. This is unfortunately very common in the private sector.