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POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

New CBO Report: Up to 2.4 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 third quarter of 2011 the Recovery Act:

  • increased the number of people employed by between 0.4 million and 2.4 million,
  • increased real GDP by between 0.3 percent and 1.9 percent (see chart below),

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  • reduced the unemployment rate by between 0.2 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points (see chart below), and

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  • boosted the number of "full-time-equivalent" jobs by between 0.5 and 3.3 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.)

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