The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million.  So to justify the Administration’s current claim of 2.8 million jobs “created or saved” by stimulus, they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only 126.9 million jobs.  That’s exactly what they do, displayed as the “baseline projection” level in the graphic below from an April 14, 2010 report:

An inconvenient truth, at least for the Obama Administration, is that once upon a time, in their January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report they told America that without their stimulus there would be 133.9 million jobs.  That’s right, in order to make it look like their stimulus has “created or saved” 2.8 million jobs, the Obama Administration first had to whack 7 million jobs from their previous estimates.

Here’s the math:

Step 1: How many jobs does the Administration currently claim there would be, without stimulus?

129.7 million Current number of U.S. jobs

-  2.8 million Jobs currently claimed to be “created or saved”

126.9 million Jobs the Administration currently claims there would be without stimulus

Step 2: How does that compare with the number of jobs the Administration used to say there would be without stimulus?

133.9 million January 2009 projection of jobs without stimulus

- 126.9 million Current claim of jobs without stimulus

= 7 million Jobs removed from the Administration “baseline” to justify their latest stimulus job creation claims

Here’s the story problem:

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Law was rushed through Congress in the wake of an enormous corporate accounting scandal that shook Wall Street and investors across the country. CEO’s and officers at several large companies were found to have “cooked the books”; i.e. knowingly falsified earnings statements to maintain stock prices or propel them higher. The practice came to be known as, Enron-Style Accounting.

The new law had many provisions, but one of its more sweeping was the requirement that corporate officers and executives assume personal responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of financial reports. In some cases, corporate officers could face civil or even criminal penalties if the numbers they reported to the public turned out to be inaccurate.

If only the law applied to politicians.

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On Friday, in the name of holy transparency, the White House released the list of jobs created or saved with the stimulus funds. Now, let’s assume that the government can create jobs even though it can’t. Let’s assume that “job saved” is not the lamest excuse for government spending I have heard in my life time as a budget analyst. And let’s look at what this data means.

The White House claims that 640,329 were created or saved. That, by the way, is way less than what Christina Romer claimed would be created. Last week, she mentioned 1.4 million during a Joint Committee hearing. Remember.

First, $159 billion has been spent so far. That’s $248,273 per job.

However, when you look at some specific contracts that were awarded you find that some jobs were created or saved at an insane cost to taxpayers. For instance, $1,359,633,501 were awarded to CH2M WG IDAHO LLC, in WA to create 2,183 jobs. That’s $622,827 per job. That’s not as bad though as the  $258,646,800 awarded to the Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC in NY, to create 25 jobs. That’s over $10.3 million per job.

I would be happy with one of these jobs.

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