When the U.S. government heads toward a partial shutdown, a natural instinct is to anticipate dire consequences for financial markets and the economy.

• The history doesn't support it, however.

Why it matters: In the past, at least, government shutdowns have been a micro story, not a macro story.

• That is, they have caused plenty of annoyance and disruption to the work of individual agencies but haven't had any meaningful impact on headline numbers like GDP or unemployment.
• The open question is whether the Trump administration's handling of the imminent shutdown will change that.

By the numbers: The most recent shutdown lasted 35 days, from December 2018 through mid-January 2019. In those two months, payroll employment grew by an average of 221,000 jobs, better than the 166,000 a month notched for the entirety of 2019.

• In October 2013, a 16-day shutdown coincided with 220,000 jobs added that month, better than the 192,000 average for that year.
• You similarly can't see much impact in data like the unemployment rate, GDP, or retail sales.
• Even initial jobless claims, perhaps the best real-time indicator of job market distress, doesn't show much. In the week ending January 12, 2019, in the thick of the last shutdown, there were 218,000 unemployment benefit claims, almost exactly the 2019 average (217,700).

Between the lines: Traditionally, government workers remain employed during a government shutdown, even if they are not allowed to work during that time.

• They do not consider themselves unemployed, don't file for jobless benefits, don't radically cut back on their spending, and otherwise don't behave in ways that would shape the macroeconomic landscape.
• Next month's unemployment rate might temporarily rise by as much as 0.2 percentage point, "if furloughed employees are categorized as they have been in prior shutdowns," economists at Goldman Sachs wrote in a client note over the weekend.

Yes, but: The Trump administration is threatening to use a potential government shutdown this week to permanently dismiss many thousands of federal employees.

• It is unclear if this is legal or plausible, given that many departments have already experienced substantial cutbacks this year.

What they're saying: "In a shutdown, [the Office of Management and Budget] has authority to determine which employees are 'essential' and need to continue working and which are furloughed," Sarah Bianchi of Evercore ISI wrote in a note.

• "OMB could decide to furlough a larger-than-usual share of federal workers. However, any attempt to immediately fire 'non-essential' workers would likely prompt legal challenge."

Newly published plans from the Department of Labor show that a shutdown this week will delay critical economic releases — Friday's jobs report and more — at a critical moment for the Federal Reserve.

Why it matters: If lawmakers fail to strike a deal, a shutdown could drag on for weeks — postponing the publication of jobs and inflation indicators at a time when the Fed is considering how much to cut rates with sticky inflation and weak hiring.

Flashback: The Fed was grappling with the potential of a debt ceiling breach during the 2013 partial government shutdown. That's not the case this time.

• Still, delayed economic data releases complicated the Fed's assessment and communications about the economy.

What they said: A Fed staff economist briefed officials that delayed publications "increased uncertainty about the economic outlook," according to a transcript of the central bank's late-October policy meeting in 2013. That transcript gives some insight into how the Fed thinks about situations like this.

• "Given the noise that the government shutdown will introduce into the next employment report, it may be some time before we get a clearer read on whether the slowing we are seeing in the pace of labor market improvement is just a temporary step down," said then-Fed vice chair Janet Yellen.

Reality check: "Not only was the data flow interrupted by the government shutdown, but it is also hard to interpret the data and anecdotal information we do have, because they are colored by households' and businesses' reactions to the drama in Washington," Charles Evans, who led the Chicago Fed at the time, said.

• Then-Cleveland Fed president Sandra Pianalto warned that the BLS shutdown could impact inflation data for months to come.
• "The errors due to missed price observations at the individual item level will be the largest in the October data, but [those] errors can persist for up to six months, as not all items are surveyed every month," Pianalto said.

👆 The intrigue: "A reduction in quality of data collected might impact the quality of future estimates produced," the Labor Department said in a memo this morning.

The other side: At the meeting, New York Fed president John Williams said the shutdown "complicated our job ... but we are far from flying blind," acknowledging private-sector data that helped fill the information gap.

• Of note: The BLS continued to be funded and released economic reports as usual during the 2018 government shutdown.

The bottom line: The Fed says it will make interest rate decisions based on incoming economic data. That will be complicated if there is less government data than usual to rely on when policymakers meet Oct. 28-29.