Timing is everything. Three days — including a weekend — is not quite enough to cause production problems that really hurt.
Just days into the U.S. government shutdown in 2013, several defense companies threatened to furlough thousands of their employees whose jobs were tied to federal facilities or projects that were curtailed. This year, that did not happen.
Some say it’s largely because executives wanted to wait to see how Monday’s negotiations on Capitol Hill played out, perhaps giving a better indication of how long the shutdown would last. That’s something that didn’t happen in 2013 when firms threatened furloughs, which didn’t largely materialize because the Pentagon recalled many civilian workers a few days into the 16-day shutdown.
