Shutdown by the 2013 numbers

Government Shutdown

Shutdown by the 2013 numbers

With the threat of a government shutdown next week, the impact from the 2013 closure reminds us of the hardships feds and contractors faced.

Jory Heckman@jheckmanWFED

September 24, 2015 1:14 pm

1 min read

The threat of a government shutdown next week could cause financial hardship for the federal workforce, if the shutdown from 2013 is any indication.

The 16-day government shutdown triggered in 2013 forced federal employees to miss millions of days of work, and agencies lost millions of dollars in revenue, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The Senate votes on a continuing resolution today that would keep the government operating through Dec. 11, but would strip taxpayer money from Planned Parenthood for a year. The bill is expected to be defeated by Senate Democrats.

OMB has warned agencies to review their shutdown operating plans if Congress fails to pass a “clean” continuing resolution next week.

In its post-shutdown analysis from 2013, OMB estimated that federal workers missed 6.6 million days of work and cost more than $2.5 billion in lost productivity, and pay and benefits for employees.

Overall, federal agencies furloughed roughly 850,000 employees per day in the early days of the 2013 shutdown — nearly 40 percent of the entire civilian federal workforce, OMB’s report stated.

More than 2 million of those days were lost to furloughs at the departments of Defense and Treasury alone. The departments of Agriculture and Interior lost 737,000 and 646,000 work days to furloughs, respectively.

Shutdown hardship also rippled beyond the federal workforce. About 10,000 contractors were given stop work orders and received temporary layoffs.

The IRS couldn’t collect $2 billion in taxes during the shutdown. The National Park Service missed out on $7 million while the Smithsonian lost $4 million.

But with only 14 percent of the federal population, Washington hardly suffered the brunt of the shutdown. Cities with large federal workforces — such as Ogden, Utah, and Boulder, Colorado — experienced a larger impact.