Here’s a look at how a shutdown would occur:What Happens in a Shutdown? During the 35-day partial shutdown in Trump’s first term, 340,000 of the 800,000 federal workers at affected agencies were furloughed. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume. In a provocative move, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. That’d be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once Congress approved government spending.