The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

Yesterday the Washington Post reported:

Federal economic recovery aid has created or saved 250,000 education jobs, the Obama administration announced Monday, although states and school systems continue to face enormous fiscal pressures.

But earlier this year Vice President Joe Biden told the Brookings Institution:

Two hundred days ago, President Obama signed into law the third piece of our economic plan: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. And today there’s a growing consensus: The Recovery Act is, in fact, working. Don’t just take my word for it. Analysts from Moody’s to IHS Global Insight, to the Economic Policy Institute and others all estimate the Recovery Act has created or saved between 500,000 to 750,000 jobs.

So the Obama administration’s $787 stimulus has created 500,000 jobs so far, and half of them half been in the education sector? Education is such a small sector of the overall economy that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics lumps it in with health services. Even then, according to the most recent employment report, the combined education/health services sector makes up only 15% of our economy. According to ProPublica, the federal government has spent $288 billion so far with $67 billion of that going to education. So 23% if the spending has caused 50% of the job saving/creation?

The Post goes on to report:

By “jobs saved,” the report means potential reductions in force that had been averted through restoration of funds. The report emphasizes that figures are preliminary.

So really these are just “estimates” and “preliminary” ones at that. The reality is that the Obama administration’s stimulus job numbers can not be trusted. When the White House was pitching its plan to the American people, it produced a report claiming the stimulus would keep unemployment under a peak of 8%. And what have actual Bureau of Labor and Statistics shown? A a 26-year record high of 9.8% unemployment rate. The White House does not have a credible track record in estimating jobs created or saved.

The only objective way to hold the Obama administration accountable for their $787 billion stimulus is to compare their jobs promises with actual jobs numbers. When the Obama administration first unveiled their 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. Putting these numbers together, we can create an objective standard to judge both the President and his stimulus by: 136.1 million plus 2.5 million equals 138.6 million; and 134.6 million plus 4 million equals 138.6 million. So the objective, Obama administration created, BLS data verifiable, jobs accountability number is 138.6 million. The most recent BLS report shows that President Obama is 7.6 million jobs short of his promise to the American people.