CBO Releases Report on ARRA Impact

This week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its report on the ARRA’s overall impact on employment in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010.

Using statistical models and information submitted by ARRA grant recipients, the CBO estimates that the ARRA’s policies had these effects during the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010:

Lowered the unemployment rate by between .7 percentage points and and 1.9 percentage points,
Increased the number of people employed by between 1.3 million and 3.5 million, and
Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 1.8 million to 5.0 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers)

The report goes on to say that while recipients of ARRA funds are reporting jobs they and their subcontractors have created, lower-level subcontractors are not included in the reporting.