jonathan-cunningham:

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased the number of people employed by between 300,000 and 2 million jobs in December.[1] In other words, between 300,000 and 2 million people employed in December owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. This estimate, by Congress’ non-partisan economic and budget analysts, is more comprehensive than the 200,000 jobs that ARRA recipients reported in January, CBO explains.

ARRA succeeded in its primary goal of protecting the economy during the worst of the recession. The CBO report finds that ARRA’s impact on jobs peaked in the third quarter of 2010, when up to 3.6 million people owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. Since then, the Act’s job impact has gradually declined as the economy recovers and certain provisions expire. More than 90 percent of ARRA funds were spent by December, according to CBO.

While the report focuses primarily on the fourth quarter of 2011, CBO also includes new projections of the Recovery Act’s jobs impact through 2012. It projects that in the current quarter (the first quarter of 2012), there are 200,000 to 1.5 million more people employed because of ARRA.

The ARRA is a perfect example of the Keynesian multiplier in effect- when you temporarily support people who would otherwise be out of a job, it gives them time to prepare (through retraining or further education) while allowing them to continue their standard of living. This is much preferable to the mass disenfranchisement and evictions that would have followed without aid, and ensures that drugs and crime aren’t the motivators that they would otherwise be.