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                <p>WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US government shutdown of a few days would not hurt the economy, but a lockup of three weeks or more would hit growth, especially in the nation's capital, economists said Thursday.</p>
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With Congress still arm wrestling over budget cuts as a midnight Friday deadline loomed, the country faced the imminent prospect of some 800,000 "non-essential" government workers being sent home without pay.</p>
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The shutdown would spell a loss for government workers of around $2 billion each week, cash that filters through the economy via mortgage payments, grocery shopping and trips to the cinema.</p>
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Cuts in government services could cripple small entrepreneurs waiting for government aid, while Wall Street would be left without an all-important rudder supplied by regular economic data releases.</p>
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National parks from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone would close, hitting the restaurants, hotels and shops that depend on their visitors.</p>
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But Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody's Analytics, said a short lockout would not have a lasting effect.</p>
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"If this lasts a few days, a week or less, I don't think it will have much economic impact," he said.</p>
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The previous shutdown in 1995 "didn't appear to have affected the economy at all," he said.</p>
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Nomura Securities economists however calculated the three-week 1995 shutdown reduced quarterly US economic growth by 0.09-0.17 percentage points per week.</p>
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A three-week lockout of workers, according to Faucher, would begin taking a toll.</p>
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More and more businesses would be left waiting for permits and rulings and contractors would struggle to keep staff as they go for longer without payment.</p>
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And consumer confidence would likely shrink, placing a drag on the still-feeble economic recovery, Faucher said.</p>
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But the biggest hit could be in the very place where the budgets are decided: Washington.</p>
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Some 13.7 percent of the area's workers are directly employed by the federal government, compared with two percent nationally, according to Moody's Analytics.</p>
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Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside of Washington, were already anticipating some impact on their 1.1 million population.</p>
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Thirteen percent of Fairfax residents are employed directly by the federal government; 22,000 federal workers go to offices in the county.</p>
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The county's thousands of small and large contractors make it the largest recipient of federal procurement funds in the country.</p>
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"In general, we largely escaped the great recession, largely because of our dependence on government contracting," county supervisor Pat Herrity said.
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"That could turn around and bite us."
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A short shutdown would not have much overall impact, except on the smallest companies, like restaurants who serve the lunchtime crowds from government-heavy offices, he said.
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"In business, uncertainty is not your friend. If you are a small vendor, do you order food for the next week?"
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Roy Meyers, a budget expert at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, points to another hidden cost.
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He said that government contractors may have begun figuring a shutdown into their own work as early as January, when the newly Republican-dominated House of Representatives started work on the budget.
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Some would build a risk premium into their bids; others might place a hold on hiring new people.
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"The anticipatory impacts of the shutdown are just as important."
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It can be small per contractor, "but it adds up," he said.
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US markets fell slightly Thursday, as investors were cautious about the impact of a shutdown, said analysts. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.14 percent lower, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.15 percent.
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"Budget-related stagnation on Capitol Hill also weighed on the Street, keeping the bulls' late-session rebound attempts to a minimum," said Andrea Kramer at Schaeffer's Investment Research.</p>
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