Government Operations and Websites Impacted by Shutdown

For information about how the government shutdown is affecting the operations and services of the federal government, see the USA.gov shutdown information page at http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml. The White House has also posted links to agency contingency plans at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/contingency-plans.
Most government websites indicate being closed completely or not updating information because of the shutdown. A partial list of shut down websites include those from the:

• Census Bureau
• Copyright Office (Will accept registrations to be processed once the shutdown ends.)
• Library of Congress (except the legislative sites Thomas.gov and beta.congress.gov)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
• Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
• National Center for Education Statistics(NCES) sites including ERIC,the Digest of Educational Statistics, and International Comparisons in Education. Fondren has three commercial ERIC databases and an extensive collection of ERIC microfiche.
• National Science Foundation
• Interior Department including USGS (United States Geological Survey) (Information about Interior Department closures is available from http://www.doi.gov/index.cfm).

A partial list of sites open but not updating include:

• FDSys (Federal Digital System)(Provides official access to documents from all three branches of government). Exception: Federal Register services necessary to safeguard human life, protect property or provide other emergency services will be updated
• USA.gov (Normally provides comprehensive information on government resources, services and forms for citizens, businesses and government.)
• Ed.gov but statistical sites are closed - see above
• CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)(but CDC Wonder for disseminating health information is closed)
• Health and Human Services sites such as NIH (National Institutes of Health),PubMed, and AHRQ (Agency for Healhcare Research and Quality)
• HUD.gov (Housing and Urban Development)
• Grants.gov (Will accept applications, but applications will not be processed by any of the federal agencies.)

The USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) has funds to continue operating for several weeks. The Department of Energy pages presently have no statement as to their status.

On Oct. 3, 2013 Inside Higher Education documented interruptions in academic research as a result on the shutdown in an article by Michael Stratford entitled Locked Out of the Library.

If you wish to contact Congress to describe how the lack of access affects you, Who Represents Me, Texas provides a database to identify your U.S. House of Representatives member as well as the Senators from Texas.

Employment Trends: Young Adults and Older Workers

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and The Generations Initiative have published a report analyzing the "divergent labor market trends for young and older adults since 1980." The major findings of the report entitled Failure to Launch: Structural Shift and the New Lost Generation are:

• In 1980, young adults reached the middle of the wage distribution at age 26; today, they do not reach the same point until age 30. For young African Americans, it has increased from age 25 to 33.
• Young adults’ labor force participation rate has returned to its 1972 level, a decline that started in the late 1980s and has accelerated since 2000.
• Older workers aren't crowding young adults out of the labor market: there are more job openings created from retirements per young person today than there were in the 1990s.
• The 2000s were a lost decade for young adults. Between 2000 and 2012, the employment rate for young fell from 84 percent to 72 percent.
• Opportunities have especially dwindled for young men, high school graduates, and young African Americans.

Read the full report and/or the executive summary.