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Compared with no stimulus, the stimulus plan in 2009 alone was expected to increase GDP by 1 to 3 percentage points, raise payroll employment by 500,000 to 1 million jobs and lower the unemployment rate by half a percentage point. At first glance, it doesn’t appear the stimulus achieved these objectives.
In the year after the plan’s passage, the labor market continued to hemorrhage jobs and unemployment climbed above 10 percent. Indeed, the unemployment rate is now higher than it was expected to be without the stimulus plan—and has been every month since the plan’s passage (Chart 5). This seems inconsistent with official estimates of the plan’s performance. The first quarterly report, including data through September 2009, found that the plan had created or saved about 1 million jobs and boosted GDP 2 to 3 percentage points in the second and third quarters.2 Subsequent analysis from the Council of Economic Advisers and several private forecasting firms found even more favorable results, seeing the stimulus on track to save or create the 3.5 million jobs that were originally forecast for the 2009–10 period. How can this be?
The key proviso is this: what might have been. Simply put, there’s no way to know how badly the economy would have performed in the absence of fiscal stimulus and no way to prove how many jobs would have existed without stimulus.
