​Employees of government contractors who have been furloughed as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown are legally entitled to apply for and receive unemployment insurance, the National Employment Law Project emphasized in a press release on October 10. 

The federal contract workers would have to pay back these unemployment benefits if they receive back pay at the end of the shutdown, but a granting of back pay to these workers, who are not federal employees, is highly unlikely. 

These contractor furloughs can be quite significant, especially in communities with a high density of federal contracting jobs, like the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern Virginia, or other regions with significant contractor presence. 

Lockheed Martin estimates it will furlough 2,400 people at this time; Lawrence Livermore, in the San Francisco Bay area, has 6,000 workers in jeopardy of furlough; and SAIC in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has placed 1,000 employees on some form of leave. These are only a few examples of what will be increasingly happening throughout the country as the shutdown continues.

Although all state unemployment laws usually require that unemployed workers be actively seeking new jobs as a condition of receipt of benefits, because furloughed federal contract workers are still attached to their current employers (and will presumably return to those jobs when the shutdown is over), they generally need not be looking for new jobs under these circumstances.

For a complete list of state offices that process unemployment insurance claims, furloughed workers can consult this website: http://www.servicelocator.org/OWSLinks.asp. They may begin applying as soon as they are furloughed and are encouraged to act at once.