The government shutdown this week would jeopardizes the paychecks of more than 800,000 federal workers who could be told to stay home. The federal government has almost 2 million employees. In Charlotte, there are about 12,000 federal government employees, according to The Washington Post. That’s about 1.4 percent of the city’s work force.

It is impossible at this point to determine how many workers will lose hours and pay or for how long. President Obama has signed a bill that ensures that certain members of the U.S. military and U.S. Coast Guard will be paid during a government shutdown. In past shutdowns, employees ordered off the job have been reimbursed, but there is no guarantee of such compensation, the Post notes.

Charlotte will likely escape significant harm from the partial government shutdown, says Mark Vitner, managing director at Wells Fargo Securities. “It’s a big drag on the Washington, D.C., area and, to a lesser extent, the Fort Bragg area,” he says. The shutdown causes doubts about the effectiveness of the federal government, he adds.

N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory says his administration has been working on a response to the shutdown for weeks and that agencies are being careful about spending state money that might not be reimbursed by the federal government, according to WSOC-TV.

While the government’s partial shutdown continues, most companies across the country are doing business as usual. Yet concern is rising that a prolonged shutdown would cause some work at private companies to dry up and consumers to lose faith in the U.S. economy.

Best regards
und viele Grüße aus Charlotte
Reinhard von Hennigs
www.bridgehouse.law