Yep, it happened from Marketplace. I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Bruncaccio. The slow-moving train wreck we've been watching for a week has indeed wrecked. The government shutdown started at midnight. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed. The Trump administration is threatening to fire others. Marketplaces, Nancy Marshall Gensar, has more.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 750,000 federal employees could be

furloughed during the shutdown. Some federal workers deemed essential, like air traffic controllers

and baggage screeners, will work without pay. Federal employees are guaranteed back pay

when the government reopens. That's not

the case for federal contractors. Stephanie Seneca Castro is president of the Professional Services

Council, a contractor trade group. She says they'll keep working or trying to at least.

One big impact, though, is that they may require actions by employees in the government

who are simply not at their desks and not answering emails or phones, or these contractors may require

access to government facilities. Or they may find the employee they're trying to reach has been

fired. The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo to federal agency heads, telling them to consider firing workers in programs without funding or whose work is, quote, not consistent with the president's priorities.

The American Federation of Government employees has filed a lawsuit, saying the threats of mass firings are an unlawful abuse of power and violate the laws on how the government is supposed to function during a shutdown.

I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace. The Federal Reserve is walking a tight rope in so many ways right now. It bears two burdens

required by law, keep inflation under control, and get as many people employed in the economy as possible.

And to do that, it has to read the economy at a time when the economy is hard to read.

And so much is changing that's making that job even tougher.

Tariffs, stubborn inflation, a slowing labor market, now a government shutdown.

To get a glimpse of how the Fed is thinking about this, we sat down with Susan M. Collins,

president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

We started by talking about the government.

We are talking some 12 hours before a government shutdown may happen.

What do you do under a government shutdown?

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