[1] The second-longest such shutdown was December 16, 1995, to January 6, 1996, which affected all non-essential employees, shutting down many services including National Institutes of Health, visa and passport processing, parks, and many others.
The United States Congress failed to pass a re-authorization of funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, and as a result, furloughed about 4,000 workers at midnight on July 22, 2011.
In 2013 specifically, sequestration refers to a section of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) that was initially set to begin on January 1, 2013, as an austerity fiscal policy.
At that time, most federal departments and agencies began furloughing their employees in order to meet their spending cut targets.
For the Department of Defense, almost all of the civilian workforce as well as most full-time, dual-status military technicians of the National Guard and the Reserves were affected.
Due to cost-cutting measures in other areas, this furlough was further reduced to a total of 48 working hours per DoD civilian and full-time Reserve Component member.
[10] In California, the State Employee Trades Council (SETC) voted to implement a mandatory two-day-per-month furlough policy for the staff and faculty of the CSU system.
[14] In 2020, retail giants, including Kohl's and Macy's, furloughed thousands of employees because of decreased sales connected to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
[17] It was also widely used by religious groups in the twentieth century to refer to the periods when their missionaries returned to the UK on long leave.
[21] Formally named the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, it funded businesses to continue paying up to 80% of employees' salary for those that would otherwise have been made unemployed.