IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The Inland Empire economy took only a mild hit at best during the recent 16-day shutdown of the federal government, but businesses in the two-county region might be more cautious because of the closure.
There are about 20,000 federal employees in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including roughly 6,000 that work for the Department of Defense, but few of those workers were affected by the shutdown, according a report originally published in The Press-Enterprise.
Much of the damage caused by the shutdown was done to the private sector, i.e., restaurants and other businesses that attract federal workers during working hours who were off the job for two weeks.
That is a loss a business can never recover, the report noted.
Standard & Poor’s estimated that the shutdown cost the country about $24 billion in lost economic activity. There is no data for lost activity in counties and cities, according to the report.
