The federal government shut down at midnight Oct. 1.
Military service members and federal workers won’t get paid until Republicans and Democrats in Congress reach a compromise on a spending deal.
The longer the shutdown lasts, the more of a toll it will take on the region’s economy. But families in the Hampton Roads area will feel its effects right away, said Rick Dwyer, head of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance.
“You'll start to see people pulling back on their spending, and that can have ripple effects through the rest of the economy,” he said. “It means they're not going out to eat at restaurants or moving forward on big purchases because of the uncertainty of when they're gonna get their next paycheck.”
Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (R-VA) introduced the Pay Our Troops Act of 2026 in September to ensure military service members, including the Coast Guard housed under the Department of Homeland Security, would keep getting paid in the event of a shutdown. The bill has bipartisan support but hasn’t passed as of Oct. 1.
The next federal pay period ends Oct. 15. Military members and federal civilians will receive their missed paychecks once the shutdown ends, but federal contractors aren't guaranteed back pay, Dwyer said.
Military service members will be required to show up at work, even if they’re not getting paid. Some government workers may be furloughed. Others may be fired.
The White House told federal agencies to prepare for another round of mass layoffs during the shutdown, POLITICO reported.
The last shutdown in 2018 lasted 35 days as Congress discussed President Donald Trump’s border wall. This time, political parties are at odds over health care.
Democrats want to reverse Medicaid cuts and extend tax subsidies from the pandemic that kept health insurance costs low. These subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year, NPR reported.
“Because Hampton Roads has such a large military presence and such a large presence of veterans, we are actually not as exposed to the cuts for Medicaid that other metro areas are,” said Bob McNab, economics professor at Old Dominion University. “Our uninsured rate here is actually lower than the national average, and lower than Virginia as a whole.”
But the shutdown will have an outsized impact on the region due to the large federal presence, he said. The consequences of pay uncertainty will reverberate throughout the community.
“When paychecks do not start coming in on a regular basis every two weeks or more, then what we're going to see is that people are going to have problems making rental payments, car payments, mortgage payments, and that is, of course, going to require people to draw down whatever savings they have,” McNab said.
People will cut back on spending, which will affect businesses like restaurants and grocery stores in the region even after the shutdown ends, he said.
Roughly $4 out of every $10 spent in Hampton Roads is tied to the federal government, McNab said.
A shutdown that stretches into November could mean hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of damage to the local economy, he added.