How a Prolonged Government Shutdown May Ripple Down to States

As some 800,000 employees begin missing paychecks, the impact will ripple through economies with a big share of federal workers, including Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii and Alaska, where about 5 percent of workers are employed by the federal government, according to Fitch Ratings. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat whose state has some 130,000 federal employees, said the 2013 shutdown cost residents in the area around the capital $217 million a day in wages -- a hit that was minimized because Congress decided to pay them back. Nationwide, Moody’s Analytics estimates the shutdown will slow economic growth by about 0.04 percentage points for every week that it lasts, which would crimp sales-tax collections for states and cities.