In the future, I think this will be the big research issue concering the stimulus. It almost surely saved public sector jobs. The question is whether there was any trickle-down into the private sector. The authors suggest that there was more negative trickle-down than I would have expected.

This paper uses variation across states to estimate the number of jobs created/saved as a result of the spending component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The key sources of identi cation are ARRA highway funding and the intensity of state sales tax usage. We estimate the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases ... rather than boost private sector employment ... . The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services. Searching across alternative model specifacations, the best-case scenario for an effectual ARRA has the Act creating/saving a net 659 thousand jobs, mainly in government.