CBO: Up to 3.3 Million People Owe Their Jobs to the Recovery Act

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis finds that the 2009 Recovery Act is
continuing to save jobs and protect the economy from what would have been a much deeper recession. As of June, the Recovery Act had:

• increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million,
• increased real GDP by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent (see chart below),

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• reduced the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points (see chart below), and

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• boosted the number of “full-time-equivalent” jobs by between 2.0 million and 4.8 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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