(Radio Iowa) – The salaries for several hundred people who work in state government are partly or entirely paid with federal funds. Governor Kim Reynolds says about 700 civilian employees of the Iowa National Guard and about 700 other workers throughout the executive branch of state government are not being paid due to the federal government shutdown. Reynolds says Democrats in the Senate need to end their blockade and approve a temporary plan to keep the government open through November 21st.

“Then they could sit down at the table and they could start to work on the different appropriations and get the government funded,” Reynolds said. Reynolds says about 67 employees in Iowa Workforce Development have been affected by the federal government shutdown.

“They typically deal with the Unemployment Insurance Labor Market Division,” she says. “Most, some have been completely been furloughed, so they’re not working, but some are working two days a week.” Those Iowa-based employees primarily collect data that’s used by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate job gains and losses. Reynolds says those furloughs won’t impact processing unemployment claims or issuing unemployment checks to Iowans. According to Iowa’s congressional delegation, there are about 18-thousand federal employees in Iowa who are affected by the shutdown.