ABC News reports that the Congressional Budget Office this week released its latest report on the effects of the Recovery Act and found that it Òraised the GDP, lowered unemployment, and increased the number of people with jobs.Ó According to the report, CBO estimates that the Recovery ActÕs policies in the third quarter of the calendar year 2010 had the following effects (emphasis added):

       * They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent,
       * Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.8 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points,
       * Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.6 million, and,
       * Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 5.2 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (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).