Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus "has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.2 and 2.8 million" jobs through the first quarter of this year, the president's Council of Economic Advisers said this morning in its latest estimate of the effects of that "Recovery Act."
The nation's official jobless rate, though, was a still-high 9.7% in March and there were 2.3 million fewer jobs on businesses payrolls last month than in March 2009. The CEA is essentially saying that without the Recovery Act, there might have been 5 million or so fewer jobs on payrolls.
Republican critics of the Obama administration say the stimulus hasn't made much of a difference and that too many of the jobs created recently have been temporary, Census-related positions.
The CEA report, though, notes that:
"In the first quarter of 2009, the economy lost on average an astounding 753,000 jobs per month. Job losses fell to 477,000 per month in the second quarter, 261,000 per month in the third, and 90,000 in the fourth. The economy began adding jobs in the first quarter of 2010, with average gains of 54,000 per month. The change in the average monthly change in employment over the past four quarters was among the largest on record."
And CEA produced this graphic to support its claim:
Obama signed the Recovery Act on Feb. 17, 2009.
Planet Money makes sense of the economic data here.
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