Recovery Act cited for 56,000 jobs in Minnesota

Direct from the White House, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a new analysis Friday that finds that President Obama's Recovery Act was responsible for 56,000 jobs in Minnesota the first quarter of 2010.

The analysis follows a report released earlier in the week by the CEA that showed that the Recovery Act was responsible for about 2.5 million jobs nationwide in that same period - half of which were as a result of the over $200 billion in Recovery Act tax relief and financial assistance that has gone directly to mostly lower and middle-income families. Still, Minnesota employers cut 1,800 jobs last month at the same time that more discouraged job seekers decided to resume their searches, according to our colleague Dee DePass. That combination nudged the monthly unemployment rate up by 0.1 percentage point, to 7.4 percent for March. The original CEA report can be viewed HERE and the new state job impact analysis can be viewed HERE.