Despite last Friday being pay day for more than 2,000 federal workers in Delaware County, not all of them received a paycheck, courtesy of the partial government shutdown, write Steve Esack and Eugene Tauber for The Allentown Morning Call.

In Pennsylvania, around 13 percent of the state’s 97,174 federal employees did not get paid. However, counties where the federal government is the No. 1 employer are affected more than others.

Due to the way the data is aggregated, the exact number of affected county employees is unknown. But it is clear that for some communities, the ripple effect is hitting more than just federal workers.

According to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s Center for Workforce Information & Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 2,046 federal employees in Delaware County. This is less than one percent of the county’s 227,333 workers, but still makes the federal government the county’s ninth-largest employer.

“Even major cities can be hurt by this, but their flexibility to adapt is easier than rural counties and that’s what the difference is,” said Chad D. Meyerhoefer, a Lehigh University economics professor.

Read more about the effect of the government shutdown in The Allentown Morning Call here.

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