Will there be another stimulus bill?

CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) - Americans have dished out billions in recovery money to turn the economy around. That cash is close to running out.

Last March the President signed a monumental $787 billion dollar stimulus package designed to put people, like Isaias Vega, back to work.

Except, a year and a half later, he's still looking.

"With a mortgage and a family, it's very frustrating and just very stressful,” said Isaias Vega of Springfield.

Now, 16 months after Obama signed the pricey American Recovery Act that money is nearly gone and unemployment is still more than 9-percent.

"Our numbers are still fairly high if you look at the number of members coming into the center on a regular basis, it's in the couple thousand every month coming in," said Rogowski.

FutureWorks manager Kondrad Rogowski said stimulus money allowed them to create more training courses to help job seekers.

The problem is he says there just aren't enough jobs out there. For example, economists estimate nationwide there are five people applying for every available job.

About $14 billion stimulus dollars came to Massachusetts in the form of jobs, construction projects, extending unemployment benefits and continuing school programs that would've been cut.

"The stimulus program was created with the idea that by now the private sector would be creating jobs and the government would start to step back and we have seen very sluggish growth," said Petrick.

WNEC economist, Karl Petrick says you should be prepared to dish out even more money to get back to where we were before the recession.

"It would have been much worse without the stimulus package but it hasn't been enough," said Petrick.