Muncie should see little effect due to the government shutdown.
If the current government shutdown progresses like those in previous years, areas like Muncie, without a high concentration of government workers, will not see much of an economic impact, according to an analysis published Oct. 1 by the Ball State Center for Business and Economic Research.
Michael Hicks, director of the center, examined the duration of all previous government shutdowns and unemployment rates in conjunction with those shutdowns.
According to the report, the average number of a government shutdown is 7.2 days and the median length is four days. The longest shutdown between December 1995 and January 1996 lasted 21 days.
Hicks said he expected there to be no “statistically meaningful impact” on employment rates.
“I wasn’t surprised [at the findings],” he said. “If there were any effects they would be limited to areas concentrated with a lot of federal government workers like Washington, D.C. The overall economy was largely unaffected by the shutdowns we have seen over the last 35 years.”
Hicks said even if all of the government workers in Muncie were furloughed for a week, there wouldn’t be any obvious economic effects.
“[If Muncie federal government workers] were all out for a week we would not notice from an economic standpoint,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t find difficulty in other environments, but in terms of economic effect, probably nothing.”
The current government shutdown is the 18th since 1977. Hicks said current college students’ perceptions of a government shutdown are affected by the fact the last shutdown was in 1996.
He thinks it is unusual that there has not been a government shutdown since January 1996 because in the 15 years before that, there were 18 shutdowns.
“If you were a college student in 1996, it wouldn’t shock you,” he said. “Many [college students] were just born or in diapers the last time the government shut down. It seems like this is an unusual event, but I don’t think that is necessarily true.”
