The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus bill directly saved or created about 650,000 jobs as of the end of last month, administration officials announced this morning.
Bloomberg says this is a “made up metric.” I’ll write it outright: lies. Malkin writes here. Hot Air here.
The Associated Press embarrassed Mr Obama by writing:
An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.
The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.
The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.
For example:
_ A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.
_ A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.
_ A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.
So, I suppose Mr Obama created 650,000 new jobs.
Wait — wait. Do you feel it? Did you see it?
I created 173 new jobs just now.
Because I said I did.
BZ
…and I just created 1483 new jobs because I am going to write a screenplay that needs that many cast members. I will win a Tony Award, Oscar and a Pulitzer for that. Not the screenplay! The vapor the thought of created jobs puts into the heads of our vacuous media!
-j-
The Right Look
I always thought he ‘saved or created’ 1 million jobs in FEB 09.
No one said that would be a permanent savings or creation, however. Save for government jobs, of which there are more… never fewer, always more. You know that isn’t a good thing for government, to always be larger.
The promise is not only uncheckable but has, like all of his promises, an expiration date. It expired and they don’t like being called on it. Or on cash 4 clunkers. Or on the ideologues put in via the Czars. Nor the politicization of the Dept. of Justice. Nor using the FBI to go after the CIA, which is a cute inversion of Nixon using the CIA to go after the FBI.
Nixon, at least, had thicker skin and covered his tracks a bit better. Yet the Left decries the tactics but can’t bring themselves to do so now. One standard for thee a different one for me, which helps no one, at all.
RL: good for you — ! Look at the way you’re stimulating the economy yourself! Excellent! Put in for a Nobel while you’re at it, as well. My cat did.
AJ: “Hypocrite, thy name is Demorat.”
BZ
At this rate, recent college grads will learn the truth the hard way.
Voodoo numbers….
There is absolutely no way that their numbers can be verified. How can you state that a job has been “saved”? Because the person didn’t lose it?
AOW: and here’s what I’m finding locally: for minimum wage and slightly higher (or entry-level) jobs, many of these positions are being filled with older workers and/or retirees, because retirees are coming back AND employers realize the older workers have ethics and are much more reliable, less of a problem.
Tom: that’s why I say — hmmm, I think I created 29 more jobs last hour. Because I SAID I did.
BZ
I think the White House can make a case that they saved a few thousand jobs, according to real statistics, but creating jobs? No way!
The more important point is that the massive increase in the federal debt with its dramatic impact on the devaluation of the dollar has cost even more Americans their existing jobs, especially those within enterprises who have to sustain their costs of doing business overseas, a lower value dollar = higher overseas costs. And I haven’t even introduced the problem of denying the unemployed the chance for new jobs in our export sector — Oops! I guess I just did — also owing to the higher cost of overseas operations.
And then there is the damage done to all these Americans with 401ks who moved their capital from the stock market into bonds after they took the hit last fall. With the devaluation of the dollar, the bond market has been seriously weakened as foreign investors take out their calculators and see diminishing returns from fixed rate bond interest income, as it translates into the values of their own currencies, which has caused them to move their capital back into the stock market. 401k investors are doing the same thing now, but only after they took a second hit.
And then there is Ben Bernanke, who recently announced that the Fed is going to have to create a new reserve bank, and stick, wait for it ….. , one trillion dollars into it to restore faith in the bond markets. And THAT will mean higher interest rates and … oh hell! I’m getting tired of stacking dominoes here.
Unless and until the Obama Administration integrates a discussion of the economic consequences of public debt into their economic policy press releases, I will simply say to Obama “YOU LIE!”
By the way BZ, I have you linked in my site’s sidebar now.
Jacob Sulzbach
Blogging Louisiana
The most telling factor in the entire post? AP not kissing BHOs ass…
That in and of itself speaks volumes!
The government can tweak data to make a case for any point of view – for the real story on the nation’s state of affairs turn off the TV and walk through your neighborhood, looking for those small changes that paint a big picture. Out here, you can walk up to my counter with 120 bucks and walk away with 20 pounds of brown king crab. Last year you needed 160 bucks. Gentlemen, I propose to you that when the retail price of a semi-luxury item is down 25% despite a DECREASE in the supply (the quota is down this year), then no matter what the talking head on the tube is saying, the economy has a ways to go . . . . . what do you notice in YOUR neighborhood?
Alaska Steve, you wrote:
“. . . what do you notice in YOUR neighborhood?”
That’s a fair question I’d like to answer.
I see “For Sale” signs up for quite a few homes. If I were to walk four blocks in any direction from my home (I can only go three ways with the street layout as it is) I could count no fewer than one dozen signs. That’s over 35 and I’m certain the number is right, because I’ve counted.
In one home up for sale there is a couple in which the husband is now selling feed and seed as a salesman going back and forth to Mexico for a company in south Texas. He used to work for a public relations/advertising firm here in Lafayette, Louisiana (where I live). He and his wife are still together, but they are frequently apart as she takes care of the children and they both sacrifice their time with each other to make ends meet.
There is another guy who lives in my neighborhood who I saw stacking boxes late one Sunday night at Wal-Mart about two months ago. I don’t know him very well, but we’ve met and when I walked up to say hello he couldn’t bear to look me in the face, such was his shame at doing such menial labor. He used to work in the office of a local trucking company.
I count no fewer than three divorces in my neighborhood over the past six months.
I know of one family that had to sell their home for about $20,000 less than they paid for it to avoid bankruptcy when both husband and wife lost their jobs. That wiped out all their equity accumulated over five years. They’re gone, I don’t know where.
And you want to know something else? The truth is Louisiana has already turned the corner and is lowering its unemployment rate. We’re down to 7.6% in September from 7.8% in August. We’re actually doing better than many other states. But the human cost has been exactly as I described above.
Jacob Sulzbach
Blogging Louisiana
Even if he is telling the truth that is still over a million dollars a job.
What do I see locally?
Mind you this is NoVA in the outskirts of the DC Metro area…
I see one house foreclosed on a few weeks ago, another down the road up for sale and I believe a third one going up just in range of the mailbox. One block radius.
In general I notice a bit less traffic during the day, more commercial vacancies (and the county had a pretty high rate to start with), no ‘HELP WANTED’ signs in the privately run businesses, two moderate size chain stores going under, vacancies at the nearby mall and the general inhaling of breath and people wondering just what their status will be in six months or so.
Two years ago this was not the case.
Ten years ago this was not the case.
Fifteen years ago this was not the case.
Before that I lived in Buffalo and what I’m seeing now is minor compared to the outwash of the rust belt, but it did start like this… back in the early ’70s. And that feeling of ‘what the hell is going to happen to us?’ is one that I am deeply familiar with.
No good will come of this.