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Stimulus creates only 3.5 jobs in Tier's 10 counties

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Stimulus creates only 3.5 jobs in Tier's 10 counties

By Doug Schneider
[email protected]

Federal contracts related to the president's economic stimulus program are creating or saving few jobs so far across Upstate New York.

In the 10 counties of the Binghamton-Elmira-Ithaca region, contracts for federal projects have created the equivalent of 3.5 jobs, the Associated Press found. Three counties in Pennsylvania's Northern Tier have seen a total of eight jobs created.

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx" target=_blank>Web link: Track the stimulus money

Nationally, businesses reported creating or saving more than 30,000 jobs in the first months of President Barack Obama's stimulus program, according to data released by a government oversight board. Military construction led the way. States in the South and Southwest saw the biggest boost.

Locally, 3 jobs have been created or retained so far in Cortland County, the equivalent of 0.5 jobs in Broome, and 8 in Tioga County, Pa., AP's analysis concluded.

The data offer the first hard data on the impact of about $16 billion of federal spending - a sliver of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, a $787 billion program.

The New York county enjoying the greatest job impact: Jefferson, north of Syracuse, at 225. About 50 jobs were created or retained in Cattaraugus County. Spending in Erie and Albany counties each accounted for two dozen jobs.

Obama's administration had promised unprecedented real-time data on whether the program was working.

Until now, the White House has relied on economic models to argue that the program created jobs and eased the recession. The numbers help shift the discussion from whether the program is creating jobs to whether it is creating enough to justify its price tag.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20091015/NEWS01/910150392/Stimulus+creates+only+3.5+jobs+in+Tier+s+10+counties
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Stimulus + Connecticut = 20 jobs

October 17, 2009 at 10:44 pm by Jim Vicevich
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Honestly I am not kidding … 20 jobs. Just to review:

* $780 billion dollars in stimulus money, approved by Congress in February
* Connecticut is awarded $47 million (hey we’re small state)
* Connecticut has received through September $1 million
* Total jobs created … 20. Yup, 20.

But please, don’t take my word for it … straight from Recovery.gov .

http://radioviceonline.com/stimulus-connecticut-20-jobs/
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
30,000 stimulus jobs figure is way off the mark
Government overstated figures by thousands, review of documents shows

WASHINGTON - A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.

A child care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.

Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.

The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report.

The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus. The errors could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is released. It is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

The White House seized on an initial report from a government oversight board weeks ago that claimed federal contracts awarded to businesses under the recovery plan already had helped pay for more than 30,000 jobs. The administration said the number was evidence that the stimulus program had exceeded early expectations toward reaching the president's promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

But the 30,000 figure is overstated by thousands — at the very least by nearly 5,000, or one in six, based on AP's limited review of some of the contracts — because some federal agencies and recipients of the money provided incorrect job counts. The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.

The White House says it is aware there are problems. Ed DeSeve, an Obama adviser helping to oversee the stimulus program, said agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said.

"If there's an error that was made, let's get it fixed," DeSeve said.

There's no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report, but the administration embraced the flawed figures the moment they were released.

The figures released earlier this month claimed jobs linked to roughly $16 billion in federal contracts, an initial report on a small fraction of the total stimulus program. DeSeve said federal officials had only a few days to go through the data for errors before they were made public.

It's not clear just how far off the 30,000 claim was. The AP's review, which was not an exhaustive accounting of all 9,000 contracts reported by the government so far, homed in on the most obvious cases of jobs wrongly tied to the stimulus because of duplications or misinterpretations of how the jobs should be counted.

While the thousands of overstated jobs represent a tiny sliver of the overall economy, they represent a significant percentage of the initial employment count credited to the stimulus program.

Administration officials say they are trying to head off such problems before the new figures are released Friday.

"Part of this is, it's an unprecedented effort," said Tom Gavin, a spokesman for the White House budget office. "It's as new to recipients who have to do it as it is to the American people who are able to view this data for the first time."

Some businesses actually undercounted jobs funded with stimulus money, the AP's review shows, because they reported only new jobs created, not existing jobs saved. But by far the most reporting errors were found in the number of jobs credited to the stimulus.

"I'm not trying to say one balances out the other," DeSeve said. "We don't like either of them."

In one major miscount found by the AP review, Colorado-based Teletech Government Solutions had worked with the Federal Communications Commission to come up with a job count for its $28.3 million contract for call centers fielding consumer questions about conversion of televisions to receive digital signals. The company reported creating 4,231 jobs — the highest number listed in the first stimulus accounting — even though 3,000 of those workers received a paycheck for five weeks or less.

"We all felt it was an appropriate way to represent the data at the time," company president Mariano Tan said

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33522856/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/
 
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