Unemployment Continues to Rise Despite Stimulus Spending

Research from Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy tracks the path of stimulus spending and unemployment throughout 2009.

Since April 2009, the Obama Administration has spent $158 billion, or 32 percent of the total stimulus spending, on top of $92.8 billion in tax relief. During this time, the unemployment rate grew from 8.9 percent to 10.0 percent.  As we see here, the current unemployment rate has far exceeded the 8.8 percent at which the administration said unemployment would peak in 2010 without a stimulus.