[mwsherman]

This is a misleading dataviz, I’m afraid. There are around 4 million federal personnel, of which 800k are furloughed, which means the government is running at 80%.

So, at the very least, ‘Is the federal government operational?’ should be 0.8 instead of zero (aka, ‘no’). I would also expect the ‘service level’ calculator to reflect this.

Update, citation from US Office of Personnel Mgmt: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docum...

[brown9-2]

Do you have a source for the 4 million number? Most reports this week have said 1.8 million total.

Regardless of how many are furloughed versus working unpaid, not paying that many people will have a big economic impact the longer this goes on.

[_7fvc]

I don't think you can use 800k/4m to say government is running at 80%. Some departments are affected more than others. Furloughs can have ripple effect. NASA, HUD, ED are the most affected according to data.

[spikels]

But clearly most of the government continues to run because either it was declared "essential" (a rather haphazard process) or is "self-supported" by fees, like the Post Office* or Amtrak.*

More detail about "essential" workers/activities: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-shutdown-ess...

*-ironically both lose money

[Ankaios]

I'm not sure that civil-service headcount will give you a good indication of how much of the government is operational.

At NASA, IIRC only ~ 20% of the funds go to civil servant salaries. The rest goes out the door in contracts, grants, etc. I don't know the fractions for other agencies.