Offices close, services suspended across Georgia amid federal shutdown
Tamar Hallerman
October 2, 2025
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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The Department of Veterans Affairs closed its regional benefits offices and halted its career counseling programs. No new farm loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were issued, and Georgia agriculture officials warned of a slowdown of much-needed disaster aid to farmers still reeling from the impacts of Hurricane Helene.
Historical sites around the state locked up bathrooms and information centers. That included National Park Service sites in Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains, which sat closed on what would have been the late president’s 101st birthday.
Meanwhile, thousands of other federal employees labeled essential for protecting life and property reported to the office, including food safety inspectors, law enforcement officials at the FBI’s Atlanta field office, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Air traffic controllers and TSA agents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport continued to work, as did active-duty troops, customs agents at Georgia’s ports and Bureau of Prisons correctional officers.
But all of those workers deemed essential will work without pay until Congress approves a new spending plan. That could take days, weeks or even longer.
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On the ground in Georgia, the effects of the stalemate were not yet evident on some of the most widely used government programs.
…[B]ut the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, warned that SNAP and other programs could only continue “subject to the availability of funding.”
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Across the street from downtown’s Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, the owner of a cafe that serves many of the federal workers there worried about what might happen to her business if the shutdown extended for a long time.
“No business, how (will) I survive?” asked Jasmine Jamil, owner of Subs & Salads Junction. “I have to pay the rent. Rent is not going to stop.”
Georgia’s federal workforce
The federal government is a large employer in Georgia. There are just under 111,000 military and civilian federal workers in the state, according to preliminary August data from the Georgia Department of Labor.
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As of March 2025, here were the agencies with the most workers in Georgia, according to the Office of Personnel Management:
Veterans Health Administration: 13,233
Air Force Materiel Command: 12,422
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 8,702
Internal Revenue Service: 6,953
Defense Health Agency military treatment facilities: 3,558
Federal Aviation Administration: 2,473
Transportation Security Administration: 2,348
U.S. Fleet Forces Command: 1,950
U.S. Army Installation Management Command: 1,883
Social Security Administration: 1,605
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