Colorado Could See Thousands Furloughed if D.C. Gridlock Persists

By Spencer Kristensen | KDVR FOX31

DENVER (KDVR) — The United States government has been shut down since Oct. 1, with Congress unable to agree on funding for 2026.

On day eight of the shutdown, many federal agencies have deferred to contingency plans for funding, which means that many employees have been furloughed. Those employees will not receive a paycheck until a deal is struck, and might not receive backpay if a budget is approved.

A study by SmartAsset, a financial advisory agency, estimated how many jobs will be affected in each state.

SmartAsset described its methodology as follows:

“SmartAsset ranked 50 states based on the estimated per-capita furloughs due to the October 2025 federal government shutdown. Data for federal employment comes from the FedScope Employment Summary Data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for March 2025. Departments with at least 1,000 listed employees at that time were considered.

“Furlough rate estimates for each department were derived from publicly available funding contingency plans (or, in the case of the Government Printing Office, based on the most recent historical precedent in the 2013 shutdown). Population estimates come from the U.S. Census Bureau 1-Year American Community Survey for 2024.”

Colorado is estimated to be the 12th-most affected state by the government shutdown.

The top five states, including the District of Columbia, to be affected by the shutdown include:

Rank	State	% of population affected	Number of federal furloughs	State population
1.	District of Columbia	19.62%	137,762	702,250
2.	Maryland	1.65%	103,037	6,263,220
3.	Alaska	1.26%	9,320	740,133
4.	Virginia	1.01%	89,277	8,811,195
5.	Wyoming	0.93%	5,438	587,618
12.	Colorado	0.57%	33,707	5,957, 494

The five states least affected include:

Rank	State	% of population affected	Number of federal furloughs	State population
47.	New Jersey	0.16%	14,854	9,500,851
48.	Iowa	0.16%	5,064	3,241,488
49.	Delaware	0.15%	1,568	1,051,917
50.	Wisconsin	0.13%	7,598	5,960,975
51.	Connecticut	0.07%	2,727	3,675,069

The study does not provide which jobs are being furloughed, but the reason Colorado may be so high on this list is the number of military employees who work in the state.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT KDVR FOX31