$72,408 Per Stimulus Job? White House Says No
EmailJake Tapper and Lisa Chinn report:
Five hundred billion dollars in stimulus monies for spending were appropriated last February. Of that, $143 billion in stimulus funds have been spent so far.
Just $16 billion of that was directly awarded by the Federal government; most of the money went to states and localities to spend.
Of the $16 billion awarded, $2.2 billion has actually gone to these contractors to create jobs.
Today the White House released data indicating that 30,383 jobs were directly created by these stimulus dollars.
"It is too soon to draw any global conclusions from this partial and preliminary data,” Recovery Act Chief Economist Jared Bernstein said in a statement, “but the early indications are quite positive. The direct count by Recovery Act recipients of jobs created or saved from this small percentage of the Recovery Act exceeds our projections. “
Basic math would indicate that $2.2 billion spent to create 30,383 jobs would indicate a cost per job of $72,408.
But the White House rejects this.
Recovery Act spokeswoman Elizabeth Oxhorn says that “this contract money doesn’t just go toward labor/wages for workers – it also funds things like purchase of equipment and supplies which also creates jobs.”
Moreover, she points out that “the job numbers reported by recipients and posted today are only direct jobs – or those workers whose paychecks are funded directly by the Recovery Act. That hits the labor/wages part of the equation, but there are also jobs created and saved from the purchasing of equipment and supplies (known as indirect jobs) and the additional purchasing power workers on these projects have that they wouldn’t without the job (known as induced jobs) that is not reflected in these numbers – which, of course, affects the bottom line of doing averages like this one. When you account for all of the non-direct jobs, much different scenario.”
(The 30,383 jobs figure will be updated; the White House “is temporarily withholding the data from two of the 5,232 federal contract recipient reports until the two recipients can correct their obviously incorrect submissions,” a statement on the Recovery.gov website says.)
Bernstein says that “All signs — from private estimates to this fragmentary data — point to the conclusion that the Recovery Act did indeed create or save about 1 million jobs in its first seven months, a much needed lift in a very difficult period for our economy. We look forward to the much larger, comprehensive report due on October 30th.”
On October 30, the Federal government will release information provided by the states (and handed in October 10) of how many auditable jobs they created that were directly attributed to the stimulus funds.
This number will be significantly lower than the one million jobs the White House says has been created, because their computations factored in the “indirect” and “induced” jobs created as well.
As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said earlier this week: the state “reports themselves do not count a multiplier effect for jobs…. When we obviously know that in order to pave a road, it's not just the person paving the road. Somebody has got to make the pavement. Somebody makes those orange cones, so we don't crash into the people paving the road. So you know, we feel comfortable with our estimate.”
-Jake Tapper and Lisa Chinn
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…and no one will bother to calculate how many jobs would have been created had that money NOT been taken out of the economy through taxation or borrowing.
Nor will they speculate how many jobs that money will cost us later when it is extracted, with interest.
Unsustainable is still unsustainable.
Posted by: Ike | October 15, 2009, 5:12 pm 5:12 pm
The Federal Government has squandered what many has been received. Its been how many months and they’ve done hardly nothing. Enough said.
Posted by: JOE | October 15, 2009, 5:15 pm 5:15 pm
WHERE ARE THE JOBS, BARRY?!?!?!???!
Posted by: barry | October 15, 2009, 5:18 pm 5:18 pm
Wow, the basic knowledge of economic that is lacking in the above commenters is slightly obvious. You should be happy it hasn’t done its work yet, that means since this recession is lasting longer and stronger than expected (by some) then we still have stimulus left to spend.
Posted by: Tim | October 15, 2009, 5:26 pm 5:26 pm
@Ike if that money hadn’t been invested by the gov, it’d be floating in an investment banker’s swimming pool. This was not a supply-side crisis.
Posted by: Dan Ancona | October 15, 2009, 5:30 pm 5:30 pm
You must use the special “whitehouse brand calculators” to come to the same figures as they.
What none of the figures show though is that for every dollar borrowed that 4o cents is being paid to interest.
Posted by: david | October 15, 2009, 5:34 pm 5:34 pm
Same calculators they are using in
estimating what this grand healthcare
overhaul is going to cost. Be afraid…
be very afraid.
Posted by: wis134 | October 15, 2009, 5:36 pm 5:36 pm
“The Federal Government has squandered what many has been received. Its been how many months and they’ve done hardly nothing.”
JOE | Oct 15, 2009 5:15:45 PM
Look – has he single handed destroyed America, or done nothing? It can’t be both.
Posted by: jhw539 | October 15, 2009, 5:36 pm 5:36 pm
Fuzzy math at work. The total number of jobs has declined each month.
Government jobs only last as long as the grant or funding source. Once its over the fed has to spend again or the job will be gone. They need to stimulate the private sector, which their current policies scare the hell out of small employers.
Posted by: Jeff | October 15, 2009, 5:42 pm 5:42 pm
Is the White House REALLY trying to sell the broken window fallacy? Really?
Posted by: sybilll | October 15, 2009, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
CROOKS CROOKS CROOKS…Chicago’s (Chicago Tribune): Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—Rahm-bo left the White House in 1998 to become an investment banker, promptly making $16.2 million in just two years also making at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation’s current economic mess. The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker a decade ago. On Emanuel’s watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass. Many of those same risky investment practices tied to the accounting scandal eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year by the Bush administration, which pledged to inject up to $100 billion in new capital to keep the firm afloat. The Obama administration has doubled that commitment. The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director. The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has let the cat out of the bag in the Post’s April 27 issue about a regularly scheduled secret media dinner attended by some of the top left-wing journalists in the country. But it isn’t just the lefty scribblers that have attended these secret, off-the-record dinners for these gatherings have each featured a guest. Rahm Emanuel, Sec. of the Treasury Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have all recently had their chance to schmooze the press and guide them with the spin desired by the White House. So not only does Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have secret daily phone calls with which to program the media’s coverage of the White House, now it is revealed that Emanuel and other Obama staffers have been attending secret dinners to help the press understand what the White House wants reported? As Kurtz says, it all sounds “rather cozy,” doesn’t it?
Posted by: suchajoke | October 15, 2009, 5:56 pm 5:56 pm
Tokyo – The dollar may drop to 50 yen next year and eventually lose its role as the global reserve currency, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.’s chief strategist said, citing trading patterns and a likely double dip in the U.S. economy.
Posted by: Fascist Hyena | October 15, 2009, 6:01 pm 6:01 pm
@Dan –
That money “invested” by the government has to come from somewhere.
If we haven’t paid for it yet, we will.
And it is unsustainable.
Or do you think it’s okay to borrow $80,000 to give someone a $35,000 job?
Posted by: Ike | October 15, 2009, 6:04 pm 6:04 pm
The 787 billion dollar is a huge amount of (taxpayers) money , which could be used to build quite a few nuclear power plants, bridge across major rivers, rapid transit rails connecting cities and airports as a part of major economy plan of the nation. Instead, too much money is being spent on minor road/bridge improvement as well as miscellaneous services, which could be done using state’s own tax revenue. This is not to say that the money is wasted, but the taxpayers expect much more to be accomplished. Anyway, they failed to suppress the rising unemployment rate as they have originally promised.
Posted by: austin | October 15, 2009, 6:08 pm 6:08 pm
“The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker a decade ago.”
___________________________________
Try to get some perspective, this money is nothing compared with the 9 BILLION the Bush/Cheney contractors ‘misplaced’ in Iraq.
And it is nothing compared with the several BILLION Rumsfeld was about to announce as ‘missing’ the day 9/1l happened.
If you want to talk corruption and incompetence, broaden your narrow mind.
Posted by: julieterra | October 15, 2009, 6:30 pm 6:30 pm
Steve Wynn could do better than this.
Posted by: Jenny | October 15, 2009, 8:06 pm 8:06 pm
Yeah, where is this money coming from? More to the point, when is America going to go back to work? Like I’ve said a thousand times, you need to put people back to work BEFORE there is any kind of “reform bill”.
Posted by: dashdot | October 15, 2009, 8:33 pm 8:33 pm
Our company has applied for some stimulus funds directly and also sell product & services to companies applying for stimulus funds. Other than the application process itself being a fiasco, we are constantly pressured to count everything and anything that could look like it was a job created. I would estimate that from the numbers I have seen that the 30K is not a very real number.
Posted by: stl | October 15, 2009, 8:48 pm 8:48 pm
“”Try to get some perspective, this money is nothing compared with the 9 BILLION the Bush/Cheney contractors ‘misplaced’ in Iraq.”"
Your honor, I think my client should be released. He only killed two people and this other guy killed five. Why should my guy be held accountable (for anything)? The system is clearly out to screw the little guy….your court is obviously run by racist, right wing extremist white guys. You’re getting in the way of progress.
Posted by: Gwen | October 15, 2009, 11:17 pm 11:17 pm
Yep, they said “Shovel Ready Jobs”. Well, at least they could have the shovels ” Made In America”! That would be a start! EveryOne Is Still Waiting, Mr. President.
Posted by: myopinion | October 15, 2009, 11:37 pm 11:37 pm
Try to get some perspective, this money is nothing compared with the 9 BILLION the Bush/Cheney contractors ‘misplaced’ in Iraq.
You’ll also remember the several BILLION Rumsfeld was about to annouce as ‘missing’ in the Pentagon budget just as 9/11 was happening.
If you’re going to carp over corruption and incompetence, pay a little attention to precedents set by the Republicans. They are the masters of it.
Posted by: julieterra | October 15, 2009, 11:46 pm 11:46 pm
“…pay a little attention to precedents set by the Republicans. They are the masters of it.”
Liberals apparently aren’t able to defend Obama’s policies so they need to attack republicans. I think that is right out of Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals.
Posted by: Gwen | October 16, 2009, 12:27 am 12:27 am
Try to get some perspective, this money is nothing compared with the 9 BILLION the Bush/Cheney contractors ‘misplaced’ in Iraq.
You’ll also remember the several BILLION Rumsfeld was about to annouce as ‘missing’ in the Pentagon budget just as 9/11 was happening.
If you’re going to carp over corruption and incompetence, pay a little attention to precedents set by the Republicans. They are the masters of it.
“Liberals apparently aren’t able to defend Obama’s policies so they need to attack republicans.”
No, liberals are just smart enough to compare the behavior of both parties and find that the Republicans come out as the far worse of the two.
Posted by: julieterra | October 16, 2009, 12:34 am 12:34 am
Since most of the jobs are not going to millionaires who average 19.6%, we can figure that at least 20% of their gross incomes goes to federal taxes. And another 15.3% (7.65% matched by employer) comes back as FICA taxes. And more goes in to state and local income and sales taxes.
Additionally, it’s said that each dollar of income funneled into a depressed area generates up to $6 in other earnings: the guy with the stimulus job gets his hair cut, giving the barber money to buy new scissors, the scissors clerk gets her hair done, the hair stylist eats at a restaurant, etc.
Consequently, in this recession, it would interesting to see how much in taxes is generated by the stimulus. It’s got to be at least $500B and I wouldn’t be surprised if the $787B generates $1000B in taxes when all is said and done.
Posted by: The_Mick | October 16, 2009, 7:05 am 7:05 am
I suppose the people in Detroit Cobo Hall that were on the verge of rioting,standing in line to get Obama money(That is what they called it)were a part of the Stimulus Plan.Paying people to do nothing is not a plan.
Posted by: Johnny L | October 16, 2009, 8:01 am 8:01 am
THIS is the change you fools voted for and the media fell in love with. Hows that working for you?
Posted by: DANIEL | October 16, 2009, 8:05 am 8:05 am
We have a small family contracting co. It was started in 1961, have done over 700 contracts at military installations over the last 45 yrs. In the last 4 or 5 yrs, all the Procurement from DOD has gone to “S.A.B.E.R.” contracts, only ones who can bid are minority 8A set aside companies. Have put or is putting small companies out of business. All the recovery work here in ga has gone to these contractors, not to anyone else
Posted by: Ja | October 16, 2009, 11:03 am 11:03 am
JA- “THIS is the change you fools voted for and the media fell in love with. Hows that working for you?”
Compared to what we’ve had via Bush & Company for 8 years? (Spent surplus, two massively expensive wars). How do you suppose we got into this situation in the first place? The Republicans have had the majority in Congress for 12 of the last 14 years and the White House for 8 of the last 8 1/2.
YOU figure it out, smart guy.
Posted by: Dalton | October 16, 2009, 2:32 pm 2:32 pm
“Additionally, it’s said that each dollar of income funneled into a depressed area generates up to $6 in other earnings”
What planet are you from?
Adding a single dollar to the economy adds… ONE dollar to the economy.
That SINGLE dollar may get passed around many times, but it’s still only ONE SINGLE dollar additional.
Posted by: Ster | October 16, 2009, 2:34 pm 2:34 pm
30,000 jobs.
A little short of 3,000,000 promised, no?
Sham.
Posted by: Ster | October 16, 2009, 2:34 pm 2:34 pm
What is this…the wing nutt forum of the internet?
Stop your bitching and whining and post something that’s relevant to the current situation.
And keep in mind; Bush inherited a massive surplus and blew it. The housing debacle unfolded under his watch. 9/11 happened under his watch. Both wars were started under his watch.
Obama is trying to clean up the mess left behind…and of course, you already know that but don’t have the ##### to admit it.
Posted by: Dalton | October 16, 2009, 2:35 pm 2:35 pm
A little fuzzy math,You would have thought a Harvard Grad could do math a little better. 3-4 million jobs promised and only a little over 30K provable jobs created.What is going to happen in the states in 2 years when the excess medicaid provided by the stimulis runs out? and the Un-employment extended benefits? Get ready for more taxes,they are coming.
Posted by: marion | October 16, 2009, 6:07 pm 6:07 pm
what surplus did Bush inherit? I know that we were told that Clinton balanced the budget and because we were told it happened we should believe it but, it never really happened. If the budget was actually balanced the national debt would not have increased. Believe the media hype if you like but it really just proves you are sheep blindly believing what you are told.
Posted by: mbp | October 21, 2009, 5:11 pm 5:11 pm
The money is wasted. You are sending 15 billion to NJ to give state worker bigger pension and some more payoff. The big political payoff is happening. I think they gave 30 billion to the GM unions, Freddie Mac set asides and all those low income housing give away. If you pay tax get uses to it…you are going to pay alot more to Obama favorite Unions and inner city folks
Posted by: barry | October 25, 2009, 2:58 pm 2:58 pm
You have the love the ignorance of the average American. Apparently we can’t do basic math. They teach long division in 3rd or 4th grade. At the Federal level $787 Billion = 640,000 jobs “created or saved”. That’s $1,229,687.50 per job. At the Mass level $4 billion = 12,000 jobs. That’s $4 million for 12 jobs or $333,333 per job. It would be cheaper to the taxpayer to give people $100,000 to just stay the heck home.
Posted by: girlmiami | November 15, 2009, 5:11 pm 5:11 pm
I keep thinking about the banking salaries being slashed by Obama. Isn’t he going to miss those income taxes and the money donated to charities? Charlotte NC is going to change big time when there is no money to pay contractors, small businesses, you know, main street.
Posted by: ella | November 17, 2009, 3:30 am 3:30 am
Smoke and Mirrors. If you watch the other hand closely, you can see them pulling your hard earned money out of your pay!!!
Posted by: KP | November 17, 2009, 3:39 pm 3:39 pm
wow, I thought I was the only one who remembered Rumsfeld’s short-lived war on bureaucracy. Lasted about 3 hours, can you guess who won?
Posted by: kj1234 | November 17, 2009, 4:22 pm 4:22 pm
The “massive expense of war” argument precludes that liberal leadership would have done what, instead? Perhaps a trial would have sufficed? Good idea. Each time an American is killed because of something called Jihad, we’ll have a trial. Hope and Change.
Posted by: poundnails | November 17, 2009, 7:59 pm 7:59 pm
President Obama is destroying the country financially we are going to be bankrupt, the dollar is going to be worthless and we will be a memory in the minds of the rest of the world. Bush had his faults and was complicit in the start of this mess, but the demoncrats have been controlling the purse strings for long enough. All you idiots how voted for Obama vote for somee fiscal conservative candidates in the future.
God Bless our country
Posted by: King | November 17, 2009, 9:55 pm 9:55 pm