After 43 days, the U.S. government shutdown finally came to an end late on Nov. 12, 2025, when Congress voted through a long-overdue funding bill, which President Donald Trump promptly signed.

But the prolonged gap in government-as-usual has come at a cost to the economy.

The Conversation spoke with RIT economist Amitrajeet A. Batabyal on the short- and long-term impact that the shutdown may have had on consumers, on the gross domestic product and on international trust in U.S. stewardship of the global economy.

What is the short-term economic impact of the shutdown?

Having some 700,000 government workers furloughed has hit consumer spending. And a subset of those workers believed they may not have a job to come back to amid efforts by the Trump administration to lay them off permanently.

In fact, the University of Michigan’s monthly index on consumer sentiment tumbled to a near record low in November – a level not seen since the depth of the pandemic. Because lower consumer sentiment is related to reduced spending, that has a short-term impact on retailers, too.

And because parks and monuments have been closed throughout the shutdown, tourism activity has been down – a decline no doubt worsened by the reduction in flights enforced due to shortages in air traffic controllers.

The effect was particularly pronounced in places like Washington D.C. – one of the most popular destination for tourists – and Hawaii. This short-term effect will likely extend to secondary businesses, such as hotels. Indeed, prior to the shutdown, the U.S. Travel Association warned that such an event would cost the total travel industry around US$1 billion a week.

And the longer-term impact?

Estimates range, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that the cost to America’s gross domestic product in lost productivity is in the range of $7 billion to $14 billion – and that is a cost from a self-imposed wound that will never be recovered.

And from an international macroeconomic point of view, trust in the U.S. has been hit. Even before the shutdown, political dysfunction in Washington contributed to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating – something that could result in higher borrowing costs.

The shutdown further erodes the United States’ standing as the global leader of the free market and rules-based international order. Accompanied by the economic rise of China, this shutdown further erodes international investors’ impression of the U.S. as an arbiter and purveyor of the established trade and finance system – and that can only hurt Washington’s global economic standing.

Has the economic pain been felt evenly?

Certainly not. Large numbers of Americans have been hit, but the shutdown affected regions and demographics differently.

Those on the lower end of the income distribution have been hit harder. This is in large part due to the impact the shutdown has had on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. Some 92% of SNAP benefits go to American households below the federal poverty line.

More than 42 million Americans rely on SNAP payments. And they were caught up in the political maelstrom – left not knowing if their SNAP payments will come, if they will be fully funded and when they will appear.

There is also research that shows Black Americans are affected more by shutdowns than other racial groups. This is because traditionally, Black workers have made up a higher percentage of the federal workforce than they do the private sector workforce.

Geographically, too, the impact of this shutdown has been patchy.

California, Washington D.C. and Virginia have the highest proportion of federal employees, so that means a larger chunk of the workers in those regions were furloughed. Hawaii has also been disproportionately hit due to the large number of military there. One analysis found that with 5.6% of people in the state federally employed, and a further 12% in nonprofit jobs supported by federal funding, Hawaii was the second-hardest-hit state during the shutdown.

How easy is it for the US to recover from a shutdown?

Because shutdowns are always temporary, recovery depends on how long it has gone on for. Traditionally, the long-term economic trend is not badly affected by the short-term pain of shutdowns.

But it may be slightly different this time around. This shutdown went on longer than any other shutdown in U.S. history.

Also, the nature of this shutdown raises some concerns. This was the first shutdown in which a president said that backpay was not a sure thing for all furloughed federal employees. And the uncertainty over those threatened with layoffs again broke from past precedent. Both matters seemed to have been settled with the deal ending the shutdown, but even so, the ongoing uncertainly may have affected the spending patterns of many affected.

And we also do not know what the economic impact of the reduction of domestic flights will be.

Have other economic factors exacerbated the shutdown affect?

While the shutdowns in Trump’s first administration did take place while tariffs were being used as a foreign policy and economic tool, this year is different.

Trump’s tariff war this time around is across the board, hitting both adversaries and allies. As a result, the U.S. economy has been more tentative, resulting in greater uncertainty on inflation.

Related to that is the rising grocery prices that have contributed to an upward tick in inflation.

This all makes the job of the Federal Reserve harder when it is trying to fine-tune monetary policy to meets its dual mandates of full employment and price stability. Add to that the lack of government data for over a month, and it means the Fed is grasping in the dark a little when it comes to charting the U.S. economy.

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Distinguished Professor, Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, & Head, Department of Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the wake of a measles outbreak in Canada that has infected thousands of people over the past year, an international health agency revoked the country’s measles-free status on Nov. 10, 2025.

The Pan American Health Organization, which serves as the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Americas, made this announcement after the agency’s measles elimination commission met in Mexico City to review the latest public health data.

As a global health epidemiologist who studies the spread of infectious diseases, this change in status does not surprise me. Measles is highly contagious, and a drop in childhood vaccination rates in Canada and in other countries has left many children unprotected from the disease.

The resurgence of measles in Canada after decades with very low numbers of cases is not an isolated problem. The U.S. has also had large outbreaks of measles this year, and it will likely soon lose its measles-free designation as well.

The loss of measles elimination status is a symptom of a deeper issue: declining trust in public messaging about science and health, which has led to decreased vaccination rates and growing vulnerability to vaccine-preventable diseases.

What does it mean for a country to be measles-free?

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet. Before the measles vaccine was licensed for use in 1963, nearly every child got measles infection and more than 2 million children died from measles each year.

The vaccine decreased that risk dramatically. By 1968, five years after the vaccine became available, case counts in the U.S. had dropped by more than 95%. Cases in Canada also decreased substantially after the vaccine was introduced.

Tragically, about 100,000 children still die from measles each year even though a safe, effective and low-cost vaccine is available. Almost all of those deaths occur in low-income countries where many children do not have access to recommended vaccines.

The World Health Organization uses three labels to describe how well a country is preventing the spread of infectious diseases such as measles. A disease is said to be controlled when public health interventions such as routine childhood vaccinations significantly lower the rate of new infections. A disease is considered to be eliminated from a country when the only cases that happen are small outbreaks linked to international travel. And finally, a disease is deemed eradicated only after several years of no cases occurring anywhere in the world.

To achieve the status of measles elimination, a country must have no ongoing local transmission of the disease for at least one year. It will lose that status if it has a chain of cases that spread from person to person for more than one year.

Once a country has eliminated measles, there is almost no risk from the disease as long as vaccination rates stay high. But when vaccination rates drop, outbreaks will soon start happening.

What happened in Canada?

In 1998, the Pan American Health Organization confirmed that Canada had eliminated measles transmission. Two years later, the U.S. also gained the measles-free designation.

By 2016, every country in the Americas had achieved measles elimination status. The region lost that status in 2018 after outbreaks in Brazil and Venezuela, and then regained it in 2024.

But childhood vaccination rates have been falling worldwide, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect communities from measles outbreaks, about 95% of the population must be vaccinated against the disease.

In Canada, the percentage of 2-year-olds who have received at least one dose of measles vaccine dropped from about 90% in 2019 to about 82% in 2022 and 2023. As the number of unvaccinated people in the population increased, the risk of measles outbreaks grew.

After having only 16 total cases of measles nationwide between 2020 and 2023, the number of measles cases in Canada jumped to more than 100 in 2024 and more than 5,000 cases in 2025. Cases have occurred among infants, children and adults in every Canadian province in 2025, and two infants have died.

Fewer than 10% of the people who have gotten sick had been vaccinated against the disease.

What happens next?

It is likely that both the U.S. and Mexico will lose their measles-free designation in 2026, because both countries have had sustained outbreaks of measles since early 2025.

Although more than 90% of kindergartners in the U.S. are vaccinated against measles, that rate is too low to protect communities from outbreaks. An outbreak that started in Texas in January 2025 infected more than 760 people and caused the deaths of two children.

In total, more than 1,600 Americans in more than 40 states have gotten sick from measles in 2025. That is more cases than any year since 1992. More than 90% of the people who got sick were unvaccinated.

Mexico has also had thousands of measles cases this year, mostly among unvaccinated people.

Central America, South America and the Caribbean will retain their measles-free status for now. But the outbreaks in North America increase the risk of measles spreading to other countries.

Without a significant improvement in vaccination coverage and public trust in community health measures, many countries are likely to face more, and bigger, outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases in the coming years.

Kathryn H. Jacobsen, William E. Cooper Distinguished University Chair, Professor of Health Studies, University of Richmond

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.