The U.S. unemployment rate would be around 7 percent instead of 8 percent to 9 percent without the current level of doubt among consumers about economic issues, including fiscal policy, according to a study released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Bloomberg reported. “Uncertainty has pushed up the U.S. unemployment rate by between one and two percentage points since the start of the financial crisis in 2008,” said Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu, who authored the report. “The private sector responds to rising uncertainty by cutting back spending, leading to a rise in unemployment and reductions in both output and inflation,” they said. Consumers’ doubts about the economy may have been a greater drag on the economy in the past few years compared with previous recessions because policymakers had never run out of room to lower the federal funds rate until 2008, Leduc and Liu said