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The threat of furloughs loomed large early in 2013, when mandatory budget cuts seemed certain to force federal workers to skip anywhere from 10 to 22 days of work without pay this year. A new tally by Federal News Radio shows that many agencies have taken fewer than half the days they had predicted.

"While some agencies anticipated many furlough days, the actual number turned out to be much smaller," writes Federal News Radio's Michael O'Connell. "Other agencies were able to find savings elsewhere and avoid furloughs altogether."

Update at 9:15 a.m. Aug. 27: Furloughs In The Courts

In addition to the agencies we first reported on, furloughs have had a large impact on workers in the federal judiciary, as readers' comments show.

One reader who works as a federal public defender wrote in to say he had just taken his tenth furlough day of 2013. He added a link to a report by the American Bar Association and the Government Accountability Office listing furloughs and other cuts that stemmed from sequestration this year; it shows that in some offices, employees are enduring weeks' worth of furloughs. But even that report is not exhaustive, as its authors note.

Gauging the effect of furloughs on federal employees is complicated by the size of the workforce and agencies in question, and by the seeming lack of a mechanism for furloughs to be reported, compiled, and listed at a central location.

Our original post continues:

As of last week, O'Connell reports, the agency that has taken the most furlough days is the Office of Management and Budget, with seven. The Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency have each taken six, he says.

Earlier this year, all three agencies had predicted double-digit furlough days — 22 for Defense, and 10 for the EPA and the OMB.

That's the information we glean from O'Connell's article, and the Federal News Radio's Furlough Tracker. The news agency's rundown of furlough days isn't an official tally, we should note; some agencies have been more forthcoming with their data than others. If you have better information than what we're presenting here, please share it in the comments section below.

When the Federal Aviation Administration embarked on its furlough schedule this summer — and reports of flight delays immediately rolled in — Congress acted quickly to give the agency more budget flexibility, allowing it to avoid the furloughs.

Some of the agencies that reportedly avoided furloughs altogether are the Department of Agriculture, the Education Department, the Customs and Border Protection agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the news service reports.

Many federal agencies reduced spending and expenses to reduce or eliminate the need to impose furloughs on their employees. Several agencies have canceled furlough days as the end of the current financial year on Sept. 30 approaches.

Furloughs have also had an effect on two lesser-known entities: the Merit Systems Protection Board, which has received more than 30,000 furlough appeals in 2013; and the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, which warns that it may no longer be able to give emergency loans to furloughed employees, after receiving 750 loan requests since May, Federal News reports.

It's been a good year for Tesla Motors, the luxury electric car maker, particularly in California, where it's selling more cars than Porsche, Jaguar, Lincoln, or Buick. In 2013, the company has sold 4,714 cars in the state, according to the California New Car Dealers Association.

Here's a rundown of the state's vehicle sales rankings:

Tesla: 4,714

Porsche: 4,586

Land Rover: 4,022

Volvo: 2,982

Lincoln: 2,230

In California, Tesla also sold more vehicles than Buick, Fiat, or Mitsubishi (in descending order). And it's within shouting distance of Cadillac, which has sold 6,805 vehicles in the state this year.

The car industry has seen strong results in California, where sales gains in the past year easily exceed those in America overall.

"New light vehicle registrations (including retail and fleet transactions) in California increased 12.5 percent during the first six months of this year versus a year earlier," the association reports, "higher than the 7.7 percent improvement in the U.S. market."

We first spotted this story over at CNBC, which also puts Tesla's strong showing in context — the Model S isn't about to challenge the Camry or Accord — or the Impala — for market dominance.

"Toyota Motor and Honda Motor are California's biggest seller this year, at 157,035 and 100,416, respectively," the site's Marty Steinberg reports.

The Tesla Model S's sticker price is around $63,000, including a federal tax credit of $7,500. As we reported last June, Tesla claims a combined mileage of 89 mpg for the car, which can reach 60 mph in under six seconds.

Last week, Tesla announced that in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash safety tests, its Model S "set a new record for the lowest likelihood of injury to occupants," compared to other sedans, minivans, and SUVs.

Part of the credit, the company said, goes to a large front "crumple zone" — in this case, a storage space where most gasoline-powered cars keep an engine.

Losia Nyankale, 29, didn't mean to make a career in the restaurant business. But after Nyankale was in college for two years, her mom lost her job as a schoolteacher and could no longer pay tuition. Then, Nyankale's temp jobs in bookkeeping dried up in the recession. So she went back to her standby — restaurant work.

"I did some kitchen work. The pantries or the salad station," she says. "I've also managed, supervised, wash[ed] dishes."

These days, after her waitressing shift in a tony Washington, D.C., neighborhood, Nyankale picks up her 5-year-old son from school and her 4-year-old daughter from day care. Then it's an hourlong trek on the subway and bus to Nyankale's third-floor walk-up apartment. She and the children's father are separated, and he takes the kids on weekends.

Nyankale, who started out in fast food, joined such workers in a protest march in New York this past spring. The union-backed movement is asking for the right to organize and for a pay increase to $15 per hour.

Nyankale is actually luckier than many restaurant workers; with tips, she can sometimes make that much. But she has cut back her hours — to 25 a week — to allow time with her children. The only way she can make ends meet now, she says, is through food stamps and subsidies for rent and child care.

Traditionally, the food and restaurant industry has been an entry point for young people, who then move up. But today, according to government figures, the average such employee is 29 years old. And, like Nyankale, nearly a quarter of them are parents.

Juggling Jobs, Long Hours

Nyankale has tried working more. When the kids were very young, she juggled two part-time waitressing jobs, routinely getting off at 1 or 2 a.m. To find cheap child care at that hour, she went on Craigslist, but the women offering to watch kids in their homes were hit or miss.

"You'd show up at the door and they're not home," Nyankale says. "And then if you're trying to potty train [the children, the sitter's] not doing anything, or you pick up your child and your hand's soaked because their diaper hasn't been changed."

Nyankale tears up thinking about it. "You know, there were times where I just went to work just to pay for my babysitter," she says.

In fact, some restaurant workers say they pay more than one-third of their income for child care, says Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and co-director of the worker advocacy group the Restaurant Opportunities Center.

She says most restaurant workers are part time, which means no paid time off. So when a child gets sick, "it creates a real crisis. Basically, lose your job and go get your child," Jayaraman says. "Or, scramble to try to find some informal care that might be able to go get your child for you."

Jayaraman supports a bill to raise the minimum wage to just over $10. So far, there's not enough congressional support to pass that, let alone the $15 per hour that fast-food workers are striking for.

The Case Against Higher Wages

Industry officials say a sharp increase in the minimum wage would kill jobs.

"Doubling the minimum wage is absolutely, positively going to reduce the number of jobs," says Scott DeFife, executive vice president of policy and government affairs at the National Restaurant Association. He says the industry is proud that one-third of all American adults got their start in restaurant jobs. Part-time work and flexible schedules are a big attraction for many, he says, and he points out that half of those making the minimum wage are teenagers.

Above all, DeFife says, the restaurant industry offers opportunity. "It's there for people who have had economic difficulties in the past, or who may not have finished four years of a college or university program," he says.

But some workers say they find it impossible to get ahead making the minimum wage.

Constantly Behind On Bills

"I been cooking all my life. My grandmother, at like 5 years old, threw me in the kitchen," says Christopher Drumgold of Detroit. The 32-year-old father of two is a kitchen worker at a McDonald's and makes $7.40 an hour, Michigan's minimum wage.

Drumgold wanted to make a career of cooking and spent six months at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Las Vegas. But he worked as an overnight security guard to pay tuition and couldn't keep up with his classes. Nearly a decade of restaurant work later, Drumgold's pay has hovered between $6 and $9 an hour — hardly enough to support himself, he says, let alone his two children.

"The day care I send my kids to, they have an overnight stay," Drumgold says. "The monthly charge comes to near, like, $100" for each child, he says. He's constantly behind on bills and must sometimes decide between spending what he has on food or on rent.

Drumgold plans to join nationwide strike marches on Thursday, even if the fight for higher wages is a long one. He hopes his kids don't spend their working life in fast food. But if they have to, he says, they should be able to make a better living at it than he can.

NPR's Larry Abramson is traveling with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is in Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Plus. Larry sent us this dispatch:

You cannot hear the drums of war here in Brunei, but you can hear the surf from the Brunei coast, or the sounds of splashing from the humungous pools here at the Empire Hotel and Country Club.

Did you know it takes 12,285,000 liters of water to fill up the pools? It says so right here in my Passport to the Empire, a guidebook to this very showy marble palace that is hosting the man who will help direct an attack on Syria, if and when it happens. It is a strange setting, a marble-lined showcase for this very oil-rich sultanate and its ruler, the supremely untweetable Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa'adul Khairi Waddien.

This meeting will not address Syria, which is thousands of miles away. But the Middle East crisis has hijacked the headlines, making it difficult for the Pentagon to get out its message: that the U.S. is committed to its "rebalance" toward the Asia-Pacific despite budget difficulties and the fact that old conflicts keep demanding U.S. attention.

The Japanese defense minister tells Hagel he appreciates U.S. attendance here despite the news from Syria. This occurs during the many "bilats" the Pentagon holds. A "bilat" is a half hour or so conclave in a gilded room. A "pull-aside" is shorter. (Two "pull-asides" equal one "bilat," in case you're converting). But the slow process of diplomacy cannot compete with the anticipation of military conflict.

The military emphasizes that it spends more time avoiding war than preparing for it, and meetings such as this one are supposed to be a good example.

The U.S. is helping ASEAN develop a "code of conduct" that will help avert even small misunderstandings — such as collisions of ships at sea — that could lead to larger conflagrations. But of course the Pentagon is also here to announce military sales, such as a plan announced this week to deliver Apache helicopters to Indonesia, or to offer the training that local governments eagerly seek for their nascent military forces.

With great power comes great responsibility. Small countries with rising economies feel they need to back their wealth with the threat of force if they are to hold onto their gains. But once they acquire the toys of war, they may also feel the pressure to use them, something the U.S. military is feeling once again.