Government shutdown could hurt Virginia workers

A government shutdown would mean some civilian federal workers and members of the military in Virginia would work without pay and possibly lead to air travel disruptions. 

The likelihood of a federal government shutdown is increasing as congressional Republicans refuse to negotiate with Senate Democrats, whose votes they need to pass a spending bill, and Democratic voters urge their leaders to fight back against the Trump administration. 

At a high level, the economic cost of a possible shutdown for Virginia would likely depend on just how long the government closes for. But on the ground, there would be impacts of a shutdown that would be painful immediately. 

During a shutdown, many federal workers get furloughed without pay until the government re-opens. Northern Virginia alone is home to hundreds of thousands of federal contractors, making the area more vulnerable to the effects of a shutdown. 

About half of all federal workers make between $50,000 and $109,999 a year, according to a January report by the Pew Research Center, and one in four earn under $70,000, meaning delayed paychecks could strain their household budgets as they pay their mortgages, rent, and other bills. 

Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers would be asked to work without pay. A long shutdown could force TSA workers, whose mean annual wage was about $40,000 in 2017, according to Business Insider, to leave for other jobs, which could in turn lead to air travel disruptions. 

A shutdown would also force federal contractors to go without pay, and unlike direct federal employees, they’d be less likely to get back pay. 

“While some federal contractors are well paid and may have robust emergency savings, many others, such as custodial staff, may experience significant hardship and need assistance from public and private sources,” according to a March 2025 report by The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (TCI).

The pain to Virginia’s broader economy would be minimal in the event of a shorter shutdown, because many employees would eventually get their back pay, according to Eric Scorsone, an economist and executive director of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

“I don’t see it having huge impacts, again, unless it went on for many, many months,” Scorsone said in an interview. 

But the impacts of a longer shutdown wouldn’t just be felt by federal workers. Longer shutdowns can lead to problems with food assistance payments, leave Head Start programs that support kids and families without federal funding, and could halt loans from the Small Business Administration. 

How we got here

Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress. But Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate to advance a funding measure and only control that chamber with 53 members. That means Republicans would probably need at least seven Democrats to go along with them to avoid a shutdown. 

The last government shutdown happened during the first Trump administration from December 2018 to January 2019 and lasted 35 days, largely over a dispute about border wall funding. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the shutdown under Trump shrunk the US gross domestic product by $11 billion, including $3 billion that won’t be recovered. A 2019 Senate report found shutdowns waste billions of taxpayer dollars, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

Some Democrats, including Virginia’s US Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, support a stopgap measure to fund the government for another month and keep negotiations going to avoid a shutdown. The legislation would reverse Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid and prevent Affordable Care Act premiums from going up. 

“Our legislation would avert a shutdown, protect Americans’ health care and keep premium costs down, and prevent the Trump Administration from illegally withholding funding approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress,” Kaine and Warner said in a joint statement released today. 

Democrats are pressuring Republicans to agree to a deal extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Without an extension of these  subsidies, millions of families in the US will lose coverage, while many others will see their monthly premiums increase by hundreds of dollars. While some Republicans have signaled they are willing to work with Democrats on that issue, many more are digging in and refusing to budge on the matter. 

The threats of a shutdown also come at a time of growing economic concern on the back of President Donald Trump’s deep federal spending cuts and laying off of thousands of federal workers. Virginia’s unemployment rate has been on the rise and the national inflation rate is ticking up even as the full effects of Trump’s tariffs have yet to be felt.

State Del. Marcus Simon (D-Falls Church) said there was no question that districts like his in Northern Virginia would be disproportionately impacted by a government shutdown. He worried that under the Trump administration, with its eagerness to punish federal workers, furloughed employees may not actually get the money they’re owed when the government reopens. 

“In the past, we’ve always been able to rely on some make-good money and things like that, and that’s generally softened the blow eventually,” Simon said at an event in Arlington on Tuesday. “It’s been sort of money deferred, as opposed to money denied. I don’t have confidence that, given the current circumstances, that we’d have that guarantee this time around.”