Melwood, one of Maryland’s oldest nonprofits serving disabled people, sends workers into federal agencies for jobs in landscaping, administrative and janitorial services.

Because of the shutdown, many of those employees are working half-time. And Melwood, which has continued paying them their full benefits, is losing about $110,000 a month, said Scott Gibson, the organization’s chief operating officer.

Even if the shutdown ends tomorrow, he said, Melwood is left with an almost existential question: How much can contractors, especially nonprofits, rely on the federal government going forward?

Melwood, based in Prince George’s County, is part of wide-ranging ecosystem of federal contractors in Maryland. The shutdown — now on Day 42 and the longest in U.S. history — has squeezed many of them.

The Senate late Monday passed a bill to end the impasse, sending the measure to the House, but the shutdown’s consequences have been especially pronounced in Maryland.

An estimated 327,000 Marylanders are directly employed by the federal government. And a June report from Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman found that federal agencies spend about $46 billion annually on contracts with Maryland companies and nonprofits like Melwood.

That’s a tenth of the state’s total economic output, and this spending creates a cascade of supporting jobs.

The shutdown could haunt many contractors long after it ends. While some government work continued uninterrupted because it had been fully funded before Oct. 1, for the most part no new awards or contract modifications or extensions are being made during the shutdown.

In a social media post this month, Rep. Sarah Elfreth, who serves parts of Carrol and Anne Arundel counties and all of Howard County, estimated that the number of contractors in her congressional district is two to three times higher than its roughly 45,000 federal nonmilitary employees.

“The Trump administration has taken nothing short of a sledgehammer to the civil service and civil servants over these last 11 months,” the Democrat said.

While the federal government has long supported and encouraged companies to hire people with disabilities, Gibson said Melwood is trying to diversify its clients to include more private firms. He said he’s also grateful to have private donors supporting the organization.

Although some employees choose to stay with Melwood for a while, Gibson said, many use its program as a stepping stone. They become more independent, he said, learning skills and gaining experience for their next job.

“Careers are such amazing and comprehensive empowerment tools,” Gibson said.

This shutdown is relatively manageable for now, Gibson said, but if it continues, the consequences will only get worse. The current plan to reopen includes funding to keep much of the federal government running for the next couple of months, to Jan. 30, with a stopgap measure.

“This much unknown makes the budgeting process hard,” Gibson said. “But it has been a season of unknown.”

That’s because many contractors, like Melwood, also rely on state funding that is heavily leveraged with federal funding from programs like Medicaid or agencies like the U.S. Department of Education, Gibson said.

The end of the government shutdown will bring some relief to nonprofits, Gibson added, but it will really be more like the temporary calm during the eye of a hurricane.

More federal funding cuts are expected, he said, and he fears whether Maryland can fill that funding gap.

“There will be immense pressure on the budget challenges facing developmental disability services,” Gibson said. “Reopening the government? That’s not the end of the journey for us.”