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There have been two U.S. government shutdowns in recent history, Nov 1995 and Dec 1995. Looming government shutdowns seem to be a bit of a joke as read here, or on NPR

Still, with so many federal agencies deemed essential, it's unclear whether most Americans will even notice if the government is shut down.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines "essential" government services and "essential" employees as those:

  • Providing for the national security;



The OMB also requires that government agencies have a plan for what to do. The Clinton administration published some of the following as its estimates of the effects of the previous government shutdowns:

  • Medicare: 400,000 newly eligible participants were delayed in enrolling.





Although the same article notes:


What percentage did those hundreds of thousands of nonessential government employees represent? (as a number of people, and as a percentage of the personnel budget?**

Would that percentage be relatively the same today? (Does the OMB consider more employees essential now?)

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To clarify, only a small portion of say, NSA or CIA eworkers are deemed "essential," even though they are doing national security work. –  Affable Geek Jan 30 '13 at 11:33
@AffableGeek - given their size, I would expect that there are plenty of people employed by CIA who do random "large bureaucracy" type work that is not strictly speaking national security. I'm sure they have their own logo designers, compliance and diversity departments, people responsible for organizing junkets for big brass, yadd yadda. Probably more of those than a random large corporation, too. NSA may be different (or at least was) as it's less of a large bureaucracy. –  DVK Mar 8 '13 at 15:37
I'm heartened that the spies will still get paid for spying on us. –  LateralFractal Oct 1 '13 at 21:17
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1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

For the entire federal civilian force the number is estimated at 900,000 which is about 43 percent.

This varies greatly by department as shown here for the current (October 2013) shutdown.

enter image description here

Note, my information comes from GovExec.

What was the percentage back in the Clinton-era shutdown?

I could figure that out for you, but the census bureau has been furloughed and their page containing federal employee statistics has been turned off.

enter image description here

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"but the census bureau has been furloughed". Ah lovely. Next thing you know, the people tracking the money will be furloughed because of the money they track. Then we can all free associate in the dark. –  LateralFractal Oct 1 '13 at 21:25
If a one-day furlough of people responsible for web page results in an outage, those people shouldn't be furloughed. They should be fired for gross incompetence. –  DVK Oct 4 '13 at 16:34
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