Furloughed workers return to work at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History following the end of the longest-ever partial federal government shutdown. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Employment & Immigration For federal contractors, the shutdown isn’t quite over

Furloughed federal employees began returning to work today after the longest government shutdown in history.

But for contractors, it wasn’t so simple. Some waited anxiously for approval from federal agencies to resume their work, while others had to reapply for funding. It may still be days before some get paid, with federal contract officers buried under a backlog of invoices.


Unlike people who work directly for the government, contractors face more bureaucratic hurdles before their work can resume, experts say.

“To get out of the mess, you have to unravel it on a contract by contract basis,” said David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade group that represents a variety of federal contractors. “What can only take five minutes to stop can take days to start again.“

Some of the damage can’t be undone. In a report published Monday, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that private businesses faced some of the “largest and most direct negative effects“ of the shutdown. In addition to contractors, CBO wrote, other businesses suffered from not being able to obtain federal permits and loans.

“Some of those private-sector entities,” CBO wrote, “will never recoup that lost income.“

Timothy Roe, 57, who works on drone integration for the Federal Aviation Administration, waited idly Monday morning for a government officer to reboot his company’s project agreement. It was several hours late.

“I know other companies got theirs this morning, but we just haven’t,” Roe said.

Unlike federal workers, contractors won’t receive back pay. CBO noted that workers who took out loans “will see an increase in expense as they pay interest on that debt.” The contractors include some of the lowest-wage workers, such as janitors and security guards.

Roe was one of the lucky ones — his employer was able to reassign him to private work during the 35-day shutdown.

“The shutdown ended at just the right time for us,“ Roe said. “We definitely would have been furloughed come the end of the week.”