What does ‘government shutdown’ mean exactly? [closed]

What jjackson described is something else - gridlock. (The metaphor is taken from a traffic jam where all of the cars are "locked" in the "grid" of streets - so each car is blocked by another one, and none of them can move. In a similar vein, then, when you have - as now - one house of Congress controlled by one party and the other by the other one, then each one can block the other from passing legislation.)

A "government shutdown," on the other hand, means basically what it sounds like: various federal offices will be closed, and their workers will be out of the office, until a budget is passed and their funding is allocated (or until they are defunded by an act of Congress). Exceptions are made for essential services such as police and firefighters; these continue to operate normally during a government shutdown.

It means the government is stalled, as the party who has the majority in the House of Representatives is not the President's party. In this situation, there will not possibly be any progress, as the President will probably reject what the House of Representative has approved.

What reported from newspapers or magazines should not be taken too literally, as they usually exaggerate the situation, especially a negative one.