When President Trump refused to sign a funding bill in late December, setting the country on the path to a partial government shutdown, he said he did so because the bill didn’t include the $5.6 billion he’d requested for a wall along the southern border.
Five weeks later, the damage to the economy is equal to that figure.
According to estimates from S&P Global Ratings, the country’s real gross domestic product is losing approximately $1.2 billion each week the government stays closed — about $1,984 per second. The figure includes productivity losses from the more than 800,000 federal employees who have been furloughed, earnings losses to contractors and companies that do business with the government, and indirect losses such as tourists who cancel vacations to national parks and monuments.
Use the ticker below to get a real-time estimate on the damage the longest shutdown in U.S. history is causing.
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