It was the one year birthday of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the Stimulus Package) and the President touted its success one year in.  And despite what many on the far right claim, economists on both sides of the aisle would agree that it has saved plenty of jobs.  By looking at recovery.org’s archives and other estimates we have compiled estimates of how many jobs were saved at 5 different points since the act was passed.  Below is our estimates of how it has benefited the economy.  All I have to say is, thank god it passed because otherwise, we’d be at a 10.9 percent unemployment rate.

Today bad job numbers for the week came out sending the Dow to it’s lowest level in three months. More importantly, it made many, including us, less likely to think we’ll be seeing substantial job growth. Nonetheless, based on the model we’ve run for the past several months we still see some positive job numbers coming out of tomorrow. While many economists are now predicting job losses for the month of January, we believe there will actually be a decrease in the number of jobless. Based on a regression between the weekly job numbers of a month and the monthly numbers, we are seeing tomorrow as yielding around 9,000 jobs gained. Furthermore, we expect the unemployment rate to drop down to 9.9 percent as companies are finally hiring. Check back with us tomorrow to see how our predictions fared and what we think of the actual numbers.

As 2010 has begun, we will begin seeing final 2009 fiscal year indicators beginning with tomorrow’s unemployment rate for December of 2009. After November’s shockingly good result of just 11,000 jobs lost, investors were cautiously excited. They have not been buying into the markets just yet, nervous that that was simply a blip in the radar. But the fact remains that the unemployment rate fell from 10.2 percent to just 10 percent and the US came the closest to job growth in well over a year. Tonight, as we await tomorrow’s job loss (or dare I say gain) prediction we investigate the weekly unemployment claims to see where we are likely to end up. The weekly jobless claims filed paint a pretty rosy picture and indicate to us at Fiscal Frenzy that we are likely to see job growth come out of December. Based on our models predicting the unemployment rate based on weekly jobless claims, we at Fiscal Frenzy predict job growth for the final month of December, expecting an increase of 15,000 jobs on US payrolls. We see such numbers on the basis that weekly jobless claims for the month averaged substantially less than those of previous months where the US experienced job losses. Nonetheless, we do not see the unemployment rate dropping below 9.9; in fact we predict that it may simply remain at 10 percent since more people will be seeking jobs than previous months.

Look for a breaking news update tomorrow morning on the accuracy of our prediction.

Today, as the 2009 fiscal year comes to a close, we take a quick look back and a quick look ahead.  Looking back, we see that on January 3rd of 2009, we predicted that the Dow would close the year at 11,000 dollars a share.  Today, the Dow ended the year above 10,500 and made our prediction one of the closest of the year.  Last year in that 2009 outlook we discussed how the stability of the housing industry and the recovery of the banking industry would be the catalysts behind an astounding recovery.  The housing sector has remarkably stabilized and recovered while the banking industry has seen massively robust positive changes since the start of 2009.  As we have said many times before, the one think lacking from the equation is jobs.  Unemployment is thus the pefect segue to our quick 2010 outlook.  2010 will be the year of recovery and will see the strongest recovery since that following the Great Depression.  Unemployment has ticked downward to 10 percent and the US will, in all likelyhood, finally witness job growth this month.  But unemployment numbers will still be sky high and they will only turn around with a substantive reversal in consumer confidence.  That will come, in our opinion near the 3rd month of 2010.  At that point unemployment will quickly decrease and by the end of 2010 Fiscal Frenzy predicts unemployment rates of between 6.8-7.2 percent.  While other indicators will likely slow in recovery, the job growth the US will witness this coming year will lead the Dow up even higher.  In that regard, Fiscal Frenzy sees the Dow ending 2010 at 13,000-13,500 due to very strong recovery in the first half of 2010 followed by a market flatlining in the second half of 2010.  Nonetheless, look for a great year for investors ahead.