CBO: Up to 2.9 Million People Owe Their Jobs to the Recovery Act

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis finds that the 2009 Recovery Act (ARRA) is continuing to save jobs and protect the economy from what would have been a much deeper recession. As we describe in an updated analysis, in the second quarter of 2011 the Recovery Act:

• increased the number of people employed by between 1.0 million and 2.9 million,
• increased real GDP by between 0.8 percent and 2.5 percent (see chart below),
• reduced the unemployment rate by between 0.5 percentage points and 1.6 percentage points (see chart below), and
• boosted the number of “full-time-equivalent” jobs by between 1.4 million and 4.0 million, both by saving jobs and by boosting the number of hours worked. (Without the Recovery Act, many full-time workers would have been reduced to part-time status and fewer would have worked overtime.)

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For these and other charts on the economy, see our updated chart book.