Government Shutdown: How It Affects NYC

NEW YORK, NY — Thousands of federal workers — including many in New York City — stayed home from work Monday as the first government shutdown since 2013 entered its third day. The shutdown affects New York less than most other states, but could impact several services if Congress fails to end it Monday.

About 50,000 people in New York City work for the federal government, according to the state Department of Labor. Many of them are furloughed, or forced to stay home without pay, when there's a shutdown.

The number of furloughed workers depends on the agency. Departments that perform necessary health and safety functions, such as the military and publicly funded clinics, will remain open, but all workers who aren't considered essential will stay home.

The largest federal employer in the New York City metropolitan area is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has more than 9,300 local workers, according to data published by Newsday in 2013. The department will keep 95 percent of its workers nationwide on the job during the shutdown, according to its contingency plan.

But the area's second-largest federal employer, the Internal Revenue Service, will be hit harder. The agency, which employs more than 5,800 people in the metropolitan region, will force 56.5 percent of its workers to stay at home nationwide just as income tax season gets underway, according to its contingency plan.

Furloughs will essentially gut the staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the biggest funder of New York City's public housing complexes. Some 96 percent of its 7,800 workers nationwide will stay home until the government reopens, according to the department's shutdown contingency plan.

You'll still get your mail during a shutdown. The U.S. Postal Service, which employs about 19,000 people in New York City, will remain open.

The city's more than 21,000 active duty military personnel will also stay on the job. But about half of the Department of Defense's civilian employees — of which there are about 11,000 in New York City — will be furloughed, according to The New York Times.

The shutdown won't impact most health care services. The Department of Health and Human Services says it will continue to help states fund the Children's Health Insurance Program, which technically ran out of money in October.

The program provides health care for about 684,000 kids in New York, the seventh-largest number of enrollees in the nation. Long-term funding for CHIP is a reportedly sticking point in the spending debate in Congress.

Medicare patients will continue to get insurance coverage, and Medicaid is administered by the states, so it won't be affected, NBC News reported. The city's more than 100 community health centers, federally funded clinics that serve low-income people, will also stay open.

But the Centers for Disease Control will suspend its own flu tracking program as the virus spreads across the nation. Influenza has sickened more than 17,000 people across New York, according to the most recent state Department of Health report.

Federal officials will still track influenza reports from states and hospitals, but will take longer to analyze trends, according to the Health and Human Services shutdown plan.

That means state health officials "won’t be able to call CDC to verify samples or seek their expertise," Dr. Thomas Frieden, who led the CDC during the 2013 government shutdown, told NBC News.

The Department of Interior will keep national parks open but won't open restrooms, allow access to campgrounds, hold educational programs or provide other visitor services, according to the National Parks Service's contingency plan. Federal officials had planned to close the Statue of Liberty, but New York State agreed to pay to keep the attraction open.

New York will fare much better than other states during the shutdown — it's ranked 30th among the states most impacted, according to the personal finance website WalletHub. The District of Columbia and neighboring Maryland and Virginia are hit hardest because they have large numbers of federal employees and the most federal contract dollars per capita, the personal finance website found.

(Lead image: The Jacob K. Javits Federal Building is seen in Lower Manhattan in April 2017. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)