Barry's second term was much more troublesome than his first. Though Washington experienced a massive real estate boom that helped alleviate the city's fiscal problems for a time, government spending skyrocketed; the administration posted a fifth straight budget surplus, but the next year struggled with a $110 million deficit. Much of the disparity was caused by Barry's policy of combating unemployment by creating government jobs; the city government's payrolls swelled so greatly that by 1986, nobody in the administration knew exactly how many employees it had.