CBO: At Least 1 Million More People Working Today Because of Stimulus

As the president reportedly plans to announce a new jobs package early next month -- which may resemble a smaller version of 2009's stimulus package -- the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the original American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is still creating jobs. 

The stimulus increased the number of employed workers by as much as 2.9 million last quarter, according to a new report by the CBO. The agency outlined other effects the legislation had on the second quarter of 2011 that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Those effects include:

• an increase in GDP by .8 percent to 2.5 percent
• a decrease in the unemployment rate by 0.5 to 1.6 percentage points
• an increase in the number of employed people by 1 million to 2.9 million
• an increase in the number of full-time equivalent jobs by 1.4 million to 4 million

The report also predicts that the stimulus will increase the the number of people employed next year by 400,000 to 1.1 million. That's an improvement from a CBO report released earlier this spring, which estimated the 2012 effect would be much smaller.

Still, the stimulus’ effects are waning, and they have been since the end of 2010, according to the study.

The country's unemployment rate is currently 9.1 percent, and it's hovered around that rate all year.