Shutdown

WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of five key metrics, ranging from each state’s share of federal jobs to federal contract dollars per capita to the share of families receiving food stamps. 

States Most Affected by the Gov. Shutdown	States Least Affected by the Gov. Shutdown
1. District of Columbia	42. Arkansas
2. Hawaii	43. North Dakota
3. New Mexico	44. Kansas
4. Alaska	45. New Jersey
5. Maryland	46. Wisconsin
6. Virginia	47. New Hampshire
7. West Virginia	48. Nebraska
8. Alabama	49. Indiana
9. Oklahoma	50. Iowa
10. Arizona	51. Minnesota

 
Key Stats

• Red states are less affected by the government shutdown than Blue states, ranking 26.97 and 24.50, respectively, on average. (Lower rank = greater impact). 
   
• New Mexico has the highest share of families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, 20.33 percent. That’s 4.1 times higher than in Wyoming, the state with the lowest at 4.9 percent. 
   
• Wisconsin has the lowest share of federal jobs, at 1.07 percent. The average state has 2.4 times more federal jobs, at 2.62 percent. 

To view the full report and your state’s rank 

NBC - At the two-week mark, Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a long government shutdown, with both parties seeing more upside in persisting with their conflicting demands. 

Everett Kelley, President, American Federation of Government Employees - The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act is an obvious misinterpretation of the law. Donald Trump should know that―he’s the one who signed that law in the first place!

It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for the time they were out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown is over. 

Roll Call - Federal workers are starting to feel the pinch of the partial government shutdown as the Trump administration implements workforce reductions across the EPA and Energy Department and essential aviation workers go without pay. Read more... 

The Guardian -  Federal workers are scrambling to figure out if they still have a job after the Trump administration launched a fresh wave of layoffs amid a federal government shutdown, prompting widespread confusion and panic.

A hearing is scheduled to take place Wednesday after labor unions sued to block the latest firings, setting the stage for another legal battle over Donald Trump’s efforts to drastically cut back the federal workforce.

About 4,200 federal employees across seven agencies were laid off on Friday, the administration has said, although 700 firings at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were swiftly reversed over the weekend.

It remains unclear if Trump, who told reporters that “a lot” of government workers would be fired, plans to go further. The federal workforce has already shed hundreds of thousands of staff on his watch this year.

As unions seek to establish the extent of the latest layoffs, workers at the Department of Education said that they do not have access to their work email accounts during the shutdown – so cannot check to see if they’ve received “reduction in force” (RIF) notices.