Stimulus saved, created 650,000 jobs, gov't claims
By MATT APUZZO and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE – 55 minutes ago
WASHINGTON — Nearly 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, the government said Friday, and the White House declared the nation on track to meet the president's goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year.
New job numbers from businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities were released, showing 640,329 positions credited to the stimulus, according to the independent federal board monitoring the program's progress.
Teachers and other education employees represent the largest number of jobs in the report — about 325,000. With state budgets in crisis, federal aid helped governors avoid major cuts in education, which officials said spared many teachers and school workers from the unemployment line.
But Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, voicing the skepticism of many critics, has warned about putting too much stock in claims that the stimulus saved that many jobs. Chris Johnston, who oversees Indiana's stimulus spending for Daniels, said Friday the state reported under the stimulus requirements that 13,000 teaching jobs were created or saved. But he's not sure whether any of those people actually would have been laid off.
"I think that's a hypothetical. I'm not sure we can say one way or another," Johnston said.
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell said "it's bewildering" to see the Obama administration's job-creation claims when 3 million jobs have been lost since Congress approved the program.
The new stimulus report follows the administration's admission that earlier counts of jobs credited to the stimulus were faulty. A review by the Associated Press found the government's early report overstated thousands of jobs saved or created.
Despite White House promises that errors would be corrected, the latest stimulus job count still includes mistakes such as the ones discovered in the AP's earlier sampling of contracts.
For example, the Palm Beach County, Fla., water department reported 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and other positions as part of two water projects. That got incorrectly doubled to 114.
Some agencies that received stimulus money continue to report saving jobs, despite using the money for employee pay raises.
And the new data appeared to include at least dozens of entries in which contractors listed the same number of jobs as created or saved on different projects, which suggested double- or triple-counting of the same workers used on all projects.
It could take some time for the public to verify the White House's claims, with more than 155,000 records dumped late Friday on the
recovery.gov Website, the government's official accounting of stimulus activity.
But Vice President Joe Biden defended Friday's report, saying it shows the recovery plan "is operating as advertised" and on target to reach Obama's goal.
"We're starting to make real progress on the road to recovery," Biden said.
White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said the figures show that, when adding in jobs linked to $288 billion in tax cuts, the stimulus has created or saved more than 1 million jobs.
The new data released late Friday represents 156,614 federal contracts, grants and loans awarded to more than 62,000 recipients worth a total of $215 billion. The largest numbers of jobs were created or saved by state governments. California received nearly twice as many stimulus contracts, grants and loans — $26.9 billion — as any other state, followed by New York with $14.5 billion and Texas with $13 billion.
Among the largest non-government creators or saviors of jobs were construction company Shelco Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., with 836 jobs; and nuclear-waste cleanup firm Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC of Aiken, S.C., with 800 jobs.
Teletech Government Solutions of Englewood, Colo., which staffed call centers for the digital TV transition, was among the largest non-government job creators in Friday's report. The AP's review found the company previously had claimed more than 4,200 jobs but most of those were temporary. It has corrected the job count to 635 to reflect the equivalent of full-time employees in the newly released data.
Government recovery plans — everything from the $787 billion stimulus to tax credits for buying new homes to government deals on new cars — are credited with helping the economy grow again after a long and deep recession.
But the job market has yet to show signs of recovery, putting pressure on the White House to show that the stimulus was worth its hefty price. The economy has shed millions of jobs since Obama signed the stimulus in February, giving Republicans ammunition to say the government is spending too much for too little effect.
The White House said the latest report bolstered its case that the recession would have been far worse without the stimulus — a package of government spending, tax cuts, state aide and social programs.
The numbers released Friday have limitations, since calculating "jobs saved" will always produce an inexact estimate, and collecting data from so many sources is certain to produce errors.
Bernstein said there's not a huge distinction between jobs "saved" and jobs "created" by the stimulus money. Either way, he said, "it's an unemployed person avoided."
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