Where Federal Workers Aren't Being Paid

Trump's government shutdown is affecting federal employees across the country. The Washington Post has mapped out exactly how many employees are affected in every state.

The WaPo's Where Federal Agents Aren't Getting Paid map reveals that DC has the highest concentration of federal workers. Outside of DC the state with the highest percentage of federal workers is Alaska, closely followed by Montana. The WaPo choropleth map shows the number of federal employees affected by the shutdown per 100,000 workers in each state.

The three government agencies with the most workers affected by the shutdown are Homeland Security, Justice and Agriculture. In total 411,900 employees in these three agencies are not being paid. Overall over 800,000 government workers are having to survive without pay.


The main reason why these government workers aren't being paid is the President's demand that American taxpayers pay for his border wall. Earlier this year USA Today attempted to answer the question of whether we should build Trump's wall.

USA Today flew & drove along the entire 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. During these journeys they mapped every known piece of the existing border fence between the two countries. You can view the locations of this existing border fence and also view the aerial video USA Today shot during their flight along the border on their interactive map.

Should we build a wall? A 2,000-mile search for answers not only maps the existing border fence but also explores some of the problems the USA could face in trying to build Trump's wall between Mexico & the USA. The map shows where the existing fence consists of vehicle barriers, pedestrian fencing, other fencing and where no fencing currently exists.

Should we Build a Wall is just one part of USA Today's special report The Wall - an in-depth examination of Donald Trump's border wall. In the rest of the report you can read interviews, listen to podcasts and explore the border in virtual reality.

Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has also been collecting data on the US-Mexico border for a number of years. They have spent a long time mapping the existing border fence using satellite imagery and government PDF maps of the border.

From this data Reveal has discovered that around 700 miles of the 1,954 mile-long U.S.-Mexico border is already fenced. Trump's new wall will therefore need to be at least 1,300 miles long. That's a lot of Chinese steel. You can explore Reveal's work on their The Wall interactive map. The map shows the current fence and shows where it is a 'vehicular' and where it is a 'pedestrian' fence. The map also shows where no fence currently exists.

You can get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's new wall in a video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.