Federal employees furloughed during the recent government shutdown will likely receive their paychecks by early next week — or possibly even sooner — according to National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.
Speaking to reporters outside the West Wing on Thursday morning, Hassett said essential personnel were brought in early specifically to help ensure furloughed workers would be paid “as soon as possible.”
“I was really pleased to see some of my furloughed employees show up today, and there’s a lot of hugging and smiling,” Hassett remarked. “I think that the payments will come probably early next week… maybe even before. There really has been an aggressive effort to get people to get their checks as soon as possible.”
At the peak of the shutdown, more than 670,000 federal employees had been furloughed, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Thousands missed paychecks starting October 24 after Democrats repeatedly blocked efforts to reopen the government, demanding an extension of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies as a condition.
Eventually, Democrats backed down, and Congress passed a clean continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government. The deal also included funding for three of the twelve appropriations bills needed to finance government operations through the rest of the fiscal year.
Hassett also highlighted the economic damage caused by the prolonged standoff, estimating that the shutdown cost the U.S. economy $15 billion per week and shaved off 1 to 1.5 percent from fourth-quarter GDP growth. He added that the ripple effects extended beyond government workers.
“An estimated 60,000 Americans who are not government employees lost their jobs because of the shutdown,” he said.
The shutdown also interfered with key data collection by federal agencies, which will lead to gaps in economic reporting. In particular, the October 2025 unemployment rate will never be officially known.
“The October employment report, for the payroll side, will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn’t completed, so we’ll get sort of half a jobs report,” Hassett explained. “Most everything else, I think, we’ll be able to concoct the correct number after we look back, but we will never know what the unemployment rate was in October because there wasn’t a household survey.”
