OPM Issues Guidance on Effects of Shutdown on Employees

The title of the document the Office of Personnel Management posted late Tuesday is dry, but ominous: "The Potential Impact of a Lapse in Appropriations on Federal Employees." Since just such a lapse is looming large this week, the document is worth looking over.

"Federal agencies do not have the authority to pay their employees during a shutdown," it states, "regardless of whether the employees are working as 'excepted' or furloughed as 'non-excepted'. 'Excepted' employees will receive pay for hours worked when the Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution. Congress will also determine whether 'non-excepted' employees will receive pay for the furlough period."

The good news, to the extent there is any, is that unless the shutdown lasts for a full year (a budgetary apocalypse not even worth contemplating), feds' health benefits will remain intact.

The document provides a lot of additional detail about what happens to pay and benefits if the shutdown kicks in on Friday at midnight. Click here to read the whole thing.