Clearly, there is going to be some cuts in the federal budget as the result of the current ongoing negotiations. But let's take the most aggressive scenario--the debt limit is not raised above $14.3 trillion. How many federal workers would lose their jobs as the result?

There were 2,748,978 civilian federal employees in the United States as of January 2009. This is according to the Federal Employment Statistics published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. There are currently about 3 million workers on the federal payroll.

In a post above, I projected that the cut to the discretionary budget resulting from not increasing the debt limit might approach 20%. For rough estimates, let's assume that federal spending is comprised of 75% personnel costs and 25% other expenses. So keeping the debt limit where it is suggests that there would have to be a 15% cut in the federal payroll. Somewhere around 450,000 federal workers would have to be permanently terminated within the next few months.

It seems to me that someone should be thinking about the impact on our economy of adding 450,000 people to the unemployment rolls. The number of unemployed persons as of June, 2011 was 14.1 million, an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent. Since March, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 545,000, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.4 percentage point. Adding 450,000 federal workers to the unemployment rolls would increase the rate to over 10%.

What is more "unemployable" than a laid off federal worker? How many have the skills and motivation to be attractive to the private sector? Would they permanently become unemployed? Not spending or paying taxes? Sounds like something the folks who want to go from federal spending level A to lower level B overnight ought to think about.