At the Department of Defense, for example, 650,000 civilians must take off 11 days without pay — generally once a week — through September, when the current fiscal year ends. The Internal Revenue Service likewise scheduled one furlough day a month from May through August.

On her first day at the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Obama’s new budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, sought to meet employees and found many desks empty because it was a furlough day. And the new trade representative, Michael Froman, has struggled during his office’s budget cuts to assign government lawyers to various negotiations abroad.

In the private sector, employment at government contractors also appears to be falling as companies that do government research, provide custodial services and retrofit federal properties to be more energy-efficient, among other things, are informed of contract cancellations or delays in bids for new contracts — partly because the federal workers arranging the bidding are being furloughed.

“The disjunction between textbook economics and the choices being made in Washington is larger than any I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. “At a time of mass unemployment, it’s clear, the economics textbooks tell us, that this is not the right time for fiscal retrenchment.”

Given that rough consensus in an otherwise quarrelsome profession, he added, “To watch it be ignored like this is exasperating, horrifying, disheartening.”

After the release of the jobs report, the first thought of many business forecasters was of the Federal Reserve, and what the data might suggest for its next move in September, when analysts believe it probably will begin tapering its stimulus measures known as quantitative easing. As the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, has made clear — including repeatedly to Congress — the Fed has continued its stimulus policies in part to offset the drag from fiscal policy.

So economists are watching, too, what the White House and the Republican-controlled House will do this fall as they once again confront two looming deadlines. First is Oct. 1, when government operations would shut down unless the two sides agree on spending levels for the fiscal year that starts that day. Perhaps in that same month, the Treasury will run out of ways to buy more time and Congress will have to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, or else risk financial crisis or even default.