jobsgapsaugust

Defending President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday: “At the end of the day, these investments are about more than creating jobs.” There is a reason the White House is very eager to establish anything other than jobs as the metric for success that Obama’s economic policies should be measured by: they aren’t creating any.

When the Obama administration first unveiled the stimulus plan in November they claimed it would create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At the time BLS reported that U.S. economy employed about 136.1 million jobs. But by January that number fell to 134.6 million jobs. Not so coincidentally, the Obama administration upped the job-creating magic of the stimulus to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010.

Is there a commonality between these two sets of numbers? There sure is: 136.1 million plus 2.5 million equals 138.6 million; and 134.6 million plus 4 million equals 138.6 million. Voila: the objective, Obama administration created, BLS data verifiable, jobs accountability number is 138.6 million.

So how is Obama’s stimulus actually performing? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the U.S. Economy lost 216,000 jobs in August, lowering total U.S. employment to 131.2 million. In other words, the Obama administration is 5 million jobs short.

Heritage senior fellow Brian Riedl explains why President Obama’s stimulus is failing at National Review Online.