Thirty-two months after President Obama promised his $820 billion economic stimulus would keep unemployment from rising above 8%, the Labor Department announced today that the United States economy added zero jobs in August as the unemployment rate held steady at 9.1%.

According to CNBC, this is the first time since 1945 that the Labor Department reported zero monthly job growth. It has now been 26 months since the recession officially ended in June 2009 when the unemployment rate was 9.4%. Over the same time period during the Reagan Recovery, unemployment fell a whole 3.5 points, from 10.8% to 7.3%.