You can't just subtract hundreds of thousands of federal employees from the economy without there being effects. The government wasn't paying its employees, so they and the whole host of services, products, food, car & house payments, etc went unpaid. The local businesses they supported suffered slowdowns and likely resulted in secondary short-term layoffs.
I think the workers will be paid retroactively, but now they're all in "catch-up" mode.
The gov't wasn't delivering services such as economic reports so merchants got to fly blind into the all-important holiday season. And who knows how many ticking time bombs in the form of disease outbreaks, toxic waste dumps, etc went uninvestigated or underinvestigated. I guess we'll find out in the coming months.
The loss of faith in government to sort out its problems rationally has also had economic effects and will continue to do so. People are less willing to make long-term investments when the gov't is shaky.
