Yesterday, as per Recovery Act requirements, the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) released their quarterly report on the "impact of programs funded through [the Recovery Act] on employment, estimated economic growth, and other key economic indicators." The CEA finds that the Recovery Act:

• Added about 2.3 percentage points to real GDP growth in the second quarter
• Caused employment in August to be slightly more than 1 million jobs higher than it otherwise would have been.

Critics, like some members of congress, are quick to point out that these numbers are not to be trusted, because the CEA is an Executive Branch entity and that since the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, the Recovery Act has obviously not "worked." However, these critics that say the Recovery Act had no positive impact on the economy are apparently not mainstream economists.

...the maximum contribution from the stimulus should occur in the second and third quarters of this year, when it will add more than 3 percentage points to annualized real GDP....The impact on jobs and unemployment is also significant, as the stimulus results in approximately 2.5 million more jobs by the end of 2010 than would have been the case without it, and leaves the unemployment rate almost 2 percentage points lower.

WaPo:

Brian A. Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist for IHS Global Insight, said his firm agrees that the stimulus has had a big impact on economic growth but differs with the White House on job creation....But the stimulus has clearly prevented a large number of jobs from being destroyed, Bethune said. "Instead of losing 3 million jobs, we would have lost 3.5 million. That seems to be a reasonable calibration at this point. And it's something that most credible macroeconomic forecasters would attest to," he said.

CQ:

Administration estimates fall within the range of several other government and private economic assessments, including analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which show between 600,000 and 1.5 million jobs saved in the third quarter.

USA Today:

Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, said the White House projections seem reasonable.

"They look, as you would expect, maybe a little more favorable in terms of the estimated impact, but not in a way that's incredible or unbelievable," Feroli said. "I don't believe it's quite as much as the administration claims, but I do think (the stimulus) has supported, and for a while will continue to support, economic growth."

The Hill:

The CEA projections are in line with the estimates of the stimulus's effect by Goldman Sachs, Moody's and other private economists.