The longer the shutdown goes on, the more damage it does to the American economy.  As Vox reports, beyond the 800,000 government workers going unpaid are 4 million contractors without paycheck who won’t be receiving back pay.  But could the shutdown lead to a recession?  There are a lot of numbers we just won’t know because no one is working on them.

“One of the more ironic things about what’s going on here is that because of the shutdown, a lot of the government data that would generally tell us how the US economy is doing won’t come out. The jobs report will be released as planned (and, because there’s now a bill to guarantee back pay, it won’t reflect government workers not being paid), but a lot of other economic reports with insights into items such as consumer spending, business orders, and the broader jobs picture won’t come out.

“The longer the shutdown goes on, the less hard data there’s going to be telling policymakers what exactly is happening in the US economy. So, say, when it comes time for the Federal Reserve to make its next interest rate decision, it might have less information to go on.”

Meanwhile, the stock market swoon of 2018 and the shutdown are hurting American’s economic optimism.

“The decline in confidence is widespread — among Democrats and Republicans, high and low earners — and it suggests mounting danger for Mr. Trump and the economic expansion that he claims as a strong point of his presidency. Sustained drops in confidence often signal dampened consumer spending in the months ahead, and can be the precursor to broader economic downturns.”

But perhaps this is the most significant number.  Dan Rather has long said that the GOP will stay with Trump as long as he’s above 40% in approval rating.  Look out below because the president just passed that mark and is headed in the wrong direction according to a compilation of polls from fivethirtyeight.com.

All for a border wall?