White House: Data Likely to Credit Stimulus for 650,000 Jobs

[NYC Liberal]

Source: Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials expect new reports Friday to show that the government's fiscal stimulus program helped create or save about 650,000 jobs, a figure officials are prepared to tout as a significant sign of stimulus success.

The figure would represent stimulus spending through Sept. 30 on projects or activities such as highway repairs and education funding.

The jobs data will be included in reports tens of thousands of state and local governments, private companies, colleges and community groups submitted earlier this month to show how they are making use of stimulus funds. The reports are expected to be available Friday afternoon on the Web site, recovery.gov.

As mandated by Congress, the reports cover only $150 billion of the $339 billion stimulus spending that has occurred through Sept. 30. The reports don't represent tax cuts, direct payments to individuals such as Pell Grants or grants of amounts under $25,000 per recipient, administration officials said.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125689799688318277.html

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Why Not Report All The Banker Bonuses Made Possible By $13 Trillion

in US tax money put at risk through banker loan guarantees and hundreds of billions in other assorted banker gifts, all given under "heads you win tails we lose" rules.

Slowing unemployment's been done before, but the banker bailout is truly a feat unmatched in US history - and it should be celebrated.

[Cant trust em]

24. Is the bank bonuses in unreported news?

Do tell, I've never heard that before.

:sarcasm:

I think there are about a thousand other posts for that.

[MannyGoldstein]

41. But The Admin Should Be Trumpeting That They Made It Possible!

The Administration didn't hire 650,000 people - they made it possible.

The Administration didn't give multimillion-dollar bonuses to tens of thousands of bankers, while jacking credit card rates to 25%+ - they made it possible. They shouldn't be so modest about taking credit for it.

[rucky]

2. We had a highway project

completed in less than 2 months (which is unheard of). It was great to have those jobs, but what happened to them? Do those count as both jobs created and jobs lost? What was the cost to create those 2-month jobs?

Not complaining about the stimulus, as much as I'm wonder how they got these numbers. I just find it hard to believe - as bad as unemployment is now - how much higher it sounds like it would have been without stimulus. For people who've been unemployed for a year now - it wouldn't seem fair to concentrate the effort on saving jobs that were already there. I don't know how you can tell for sure how many jobs were actually saved - it's pretty clear to track how many people you get off the unemployment rolls, though. How many people got off the rolls? How many are back on now, after temporary work?

[saigon68]

3. 650,000 jobs at mcdonalds and walmart no benefits

part time mostly with no health insurance pensions etc.

in my town n of GB the up rate is 17% with 800 people in a closed factory about to run out of their second unemployment extension

Ya that's "change" you can believe in </sarcastic laughter>.

[madrchsod]

4. highway construction puts very few people back to work

saying that the "shovel ready jobs" will restore the jobs is a cruel joke played on the american worker. springfield il lost 100 plus jobs this week when a factory decided to move to mexico.until there is real trade reform we`ll still be on the road to ruin.

[bulloney]

5. The other day John Boner was getting all religious over how bogus the job creation numbers are.

Funny thing, Boner, I remember arguing with you several years ago over how bogus the job creation numbers were from NAFTA and you argued that they're legitimate.

Can't have it both ways, Boner.

He's been reduced to being a political hack who knows nothing but to say "no" to anything that comes from the Democrats.

[liberalmike27]

10. I think a lot of the jobs

are jobs kept, not lost. A lot of people don't count those, but you have to, as things would be much worse.

But seriously, we can't talk about jobs, government produced, or otherwise, without a discussion of the onerous "free-trade" scam that has been perpetrated on Americans. How can anyone at this point not see that Ross Perot's sucking sound was spot-on. I wasn't a big fan, and I was sucked in by Clinton and his rhetoric, his going along, like the rest of the Democrats, with the Republican destruction of our work-force. But I see now.

Until we bring jobs back home, and it'll only be done with tariffs that bring the production costs up to levels where the product can be produced here, and raise us to a living wage, and ensure that we create a full-employment economy, it won't get better.

Sadly, the globalization ruse, also detracts in other ways. It takes taxes-paid to our own government away, as workers here pay taxes, which helps the debt/deficit problem.

Also, when we used to produce products here, what is called the "multiplier effect," was more in effect. Jobs here produced by the government, used to have this effect more than they do now. Say a solar installer, subsidized by the government goes out and spends their paycheck here. They buy groceries, which helps, but maybe an ipod, or television. When these items were produced here, it created more jobs here. But in these days of global profit-making for the richest, that leaves us all behind, it only profits the big guys, but not us.

Until we address this problem, and the nefarious grip the Pentagon/DOD has on our purse-strings, we'll never address our problems. And with the grip our center-right media has, in never mentioning these things as problems, it's obfuscation of this issue, I doubt we'll ever solve it. Hell, even Air America or MSNBC, rarely mention all the wasted money that goes to the Pentagon, rarely do they have Chomsky, or Chalmers Johnson on their shows.

[Hansel]

34. If you count jobs kept its probably more like in the millions due to state subsidies

Not directly, but there were a few states about ready to collapse. Without stimulus money the shutting down of many government jobs and spending would have created a wave of job loss throughout the states. Not only would state workers be out of jobs, many more businesses, those that depend on the state being in business to survive and that count on the population spending money, would have gone under as state spending was slashed.

[BobRossi]

6. 649,999

They forgot about me.

[Vattel]

7. God I hate bullshit.

What was reported (under the label of "jobs created or retained") to the government was the number of people that worked on stimulus-funded projects. How many of those persons would actually have not been hired or retained had it not been for the stimulus money is an open question. My guess is that it would be a much smaller figure, but nobody really knows. So the claims being made on behalf of the stimulus funding are highly questionable.

[Hansel]

38. I think it is likely a higher number. My daughter is a state worker at a state college

and at least 10 percent of her co-workers and workers at other state schools would have lost their jobs without the stimulus money. That was a quite a few people there alone and doesn't include all of the K-12 schools throughout the state and a general 10% who also were going to be laid off that weren't. This does not include the effect of job losses which include other businesses who supply state offices and businesses and who depend on state workers spending money. They also were to have had their wages cut, and they already get paid lower than the private industry. Instead their crap wages are frozen for 3 years.

It's not bullshit. Many of the people whose jobs were saved were just the everyday workers in the states (including contractors and businesses that supply them) that are still working today because of the stimulus bill.

I think the number is actually a little low. We have tons of road and bridge projects that are still underway so workers just move from job to job. I hear more complaining about all of the construction than the stimulus package. Our state unemployment rate is going down. It was never quite as high as the rest of the country, but it has gone down to 7.2% from 8.4 in June and the stimulus money played a large role in that.

If course we had many shovel ready projects in the pipe because our governor would never fund them, so that helped.

[melm00se]

8. then why do jobless claims increase month after month?

[mule_train]

36. becasue many of those jobs are saved

even if you have massive job losses, the stimulus is still working if it saves jobs that would have been lost

unemployment just looks like it's rising

freedom is slavery

[AllentownJake]

9. This is a fucking mess

I wish they could get their numbers straight before they start releasing them.

[hughee99]

11. Sweet, at only $230K+ per job,

They've managed to temporarily create or save 650,000 $20-50K jobs.

[TomCADem]

25. These Are Not Welfare Checks, Infrastructure Projects Are Capital Improvements

If the stimulus was just a direct transfer, then you can make the argument that we are paying for $230,000 per a job. However, the stimulus will result in the construction of capital improvements, and the repair of existing infrastructure.

[hughee99]

33. I checked the website, and a good bit of it does seem to be for

infrastructure, but I wasn't able to determine what percentage it was. Waste disposal/handling seems to be particularly prominent.

[TomCADem]

44. Also, The NY Times Just Reported That Thousands Of the Saved Jobs Were In Teaching

And I really can't argue with that.

[Igel]

12. The numbers are soft.

There's a good reason to make them appear large. There have been reports that some jobs were temporary, some misreported. There was at least one case where a group of people were hired for a brief stint on one project and then rehired for a different project, but both sets of temp jobs were counted.

This is entirely separate from the problem of mixed funds: You hire 100 people, 5% of your money is from the stimulus, so do you count 5 people? Or since all 100, in some sense, get 5% of their pay provided by the stimulus do you count all 100? Again: If you want big numbers you write "100" but if you want small numbers you go with "5".

Oregon had the same problems with their numbers, for much the same reasons.

Somebody needs to go through and understand the data not just in the aggregate, but datum by datum. I doubt it'll happen because there's not much of a middle ground--one side looks at them uncritically because the numbers reported serve their interests, and the other side will look at them too critically because that serves the opposite set of interests.

[TomCADem]

13. White House: 650,000 jobs saved, created by stimulus

Source: Washington Post

Reports to be released Friday on the government Web site Recovery.gov are expected to show that the $150 billion in grants and loans made so far under the economic stimulus package have created or saved about 650,000 jobs, White House officials said Friday morning.

White House officials said the reports -- which were filed by state and city governments and other recipients of stimulus grants and loans -- will confirm their recent estimates that the $787 billion package passed in February has so far saved or created about a million jobs, putting it on track to match their estimates of 3.5 million jobs created or saved over the three-year span of the stimulus. That calculation is based on the fact that today's reports do not include much of the package's spending -- tax cuts, safety net spending and fiscal aid to strapped states, which injected tens of billions more into the economy and, in the case of the state aid, forestalled layoffs of state workers.

And because the reports were required only of the direct recipients of stimulus funding and any secondary level of recipient, the reports also do not take into account the jobs that might have been created by subcontractors or suppliers further down the chain. For instance, if a state received a grant and passed it on to a city, and the city then passed the money to a contractor or nonprofit group, any jobs created by the contractor or nonprofit would not necessarily be reported back.

More generally, watchdog groups caution that the reports ought to be taken with a strong grain of salt given the difficulty of actually tallying the effect of government spending. The reports include claims of tens of thousands of teaching and other public-sector jobs saved by the spending, but it is hard to know for sure how many jobs actually would have been lost in the absence of the stimulus. And it is hard to know how to count the job creation in, say, a road repaving project that employs a given crew for a month or two. The reports' bigger value probably will lie in the potential they offer the public for tracking specific projects.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001095.html

[Cant trust em]

14. For those of you doing the math and concluding that this is a lot of money per job

don't forget that something like 40% of the stimulus went to tax cuts. An additional portion went to extended unemployment benefits.

[AllentownJake]

17. I've said that this bill was never really stimulative

More keeping the status quo and praying business would pull America out of the crisis.

I stand by those comments.

[Cant trust em]

23. Yes. I've read your Obama hating posts. Why do you hate him so much?

I'm just kidding. I gots to have fun sometimes.

Have a good weekend.

[truthisfreedom]

20. Yeah but... $787,000,000,000 divided by 3,500,000 promised jobs in 3 years?

$225,000 per job. Excuse me, but that's just unbelievably inefficient.

[Cant trust em]

21. I think you misunderstood the post.

Much of that went to tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

[TomCADem]

26. The Stimulus Is Not A Welfare Program, The Jobs Are Building Capital Improvements

And repairing infrastructure, which has value separate and apart from the wages paid.

[Romulox]

28. Ummm, that's not what the third of the money that went to tax cuts was used for...

:hi:

[TomCADem]

29. Also, unemployment benefits

[Romulox]

30. Right but at least those fed people. That leaves capital improvements at a tiny % of money spent.

:hi:

[TomCADem]

31. Tiny? Up To 20 Percent Goes to Capital Improvements

I would also include the energy improvements as capital expenditures. Do you have a different figure or interpretation of capital improvement?

<>

[Romulox]

32. That graphic does not show 20% of the money going to capital improvements...

"$111 B Infrastructure and Science" (what a strange mish-mash category, btw.)

Closer to 14%, even if we assume that a) 100% of the projects were infrastructure projects; and b) that these self-same "infrastructure" projects aren't simply needless pork.

At any rate, your graphic clearly shows that the "stimulus" package was just another tax cut package with some incidental spending tacked on--certainly infrastructure wasn't a top priority, regardless of how you parse the above numbers.

[TomCADem]

39. I Would Count Energy Programs Such As The Smart Grid As Capital Improvement

[Omaha Steve]

15. Gov't says 650,000 jobs created, saved by stimulus

Source: AP

By MATT APUZZO and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE

WASHINGTON (AP) - About 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, the White House said Friday, saying it is on track to reach the president's goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

New job numbers from businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities were scheduled to be released publicly later Friday. White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said the figures will show that, when adding in jobs linked to $288 billion in tax cuts, the stimulus plan has created or saved more than 1 million jobs.

The data will be posted on recovery.gov, the web site of the independent panel overseeing stimulus spending.

"It's a great example of the unprecedented transparency, where the American taxpayer can point and click and see their taxes creating jobs," Bernstein said.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20091030/D9BLFU180.html

[sui generis]

16. First of all, if most of those jobs are part time and benefit-free

they don't count.

That stimulus money is as easily going to hiring W-1099 contractors in the form of supplemental labor as any dream of creating real, permanent, packaged jobs.

Transparency is great, but we also need higher standards for outcomes.

[Cant trust em]

19. Quantifying outcomes is a good point.

Tough to quantify for straight appropriations projects what kind of benefit it has.

[AllentownJake]

18. I wish they would get their numbers straight

It appears every other day there is a new estimate to "stimulus jobs"

[tonysam]

22. And about ten or twelve million to go

for all of 14.5 million chasing 2.5 million jobs.

[Romulox]

27. Those numbers are pathetic. What a waste of a stimulus. nt

[TomCADem]

40. 3.5 percent increase in GDP, Largest Six Month Turnaround

The report notes that the 650,000 figure does not include jobs that are indirectly created, but is conservatively based on jobs directly attributable from federal payments. The stimulus is working quite well.

[Romulox]

42. As another DUer pointed out, that's 3.5% ANNUALIZED growth

(i.e. 3.5% is the amount the economy would grow in a year if it continued at the same pace.)

The actual number is likely closer to .8%. :hi:

[TomCADem]

45. I Agree, It Is Pretty Amazing. Biggest 6 month turnaround

It shows that Keynsian economics work!

[mule_train]

35. we need to increase guest workers programs, becasue this has created a shortage of workers

the 9.8 unemployment rate is becasue most jobs are jobs americans wont do

[Romulox]

43. I propose a program whereby the gov't pays people to purchase imported automobiles.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what will? :shrug:

[mule_train]

37. let's give bankers another trillion nt