Federal shutdown begins | Data on furloughed employees

WASHINGTON —

The federal government entered its first day of a shutdown on Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of employees expected to be furloughed.

The Get The Facts Data Team reviewed the contingency plans for 15 cabinet agencies to find out how many employees were expected to be furloughed.

Across these 15 departments, the data team found nearly 566,000 were expected to be furloughed. The Congressional Budget Office estimated around 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed.

As of March this year, there were around 2.2 million federal employees .

The Department of Education’s plan said 2,117 employees were expected to be furloughed, which includes 632 Office of Federal Student Aid employees. That’s about 87% of the department.

Behind it were the Department of Commerc