The MSM and Democrats would like you to believe that shutting down the government is the end of the world. Yet at Axios, yes the far-left leaning Axios reports that any concept that a government shutdown would lead to dire consequences for financial markets and the economy is false and history does not support it.
When the U.S. government heads toward a partial shutdown, a natural instinct is to anticipate dire consequences for financial markets and the economy.
The history doesn't support it, however.
Why it matters: In the past, at least, government shutdowns have been a micro story, not a macro story.
That is, they have caused plenty of annoyance and disruption to the work of individual agencies but haven't had any meaningful impact on headline numbers like GDP or unemployment.
The open question is whether the Trump administration's handling of the imminent shutdown will change that.
By the numbers: The most recent shutdown lasted 35 days, from December 2018 through mid-January 2019. In those two months, payroll employment grew by an average of 221,000 jobs, better than the 166,000 a month notched for the entirety of 2019.