Saturday, October 17, 2009

Numbers Without Answers

The Obama Administration's stimulus package -- officially, Public Law 111-5, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed February 17, 2009 -- cost $787 billion. Under Section 1512 of the law, companies that directly receive stimulus money, via any "grant, loan, or contract," must report the funding and the number of jobs created. As recently as September, the White House predicted the package as a whole would create or save one million jobs.

The first data set was released last week. What do the numbers show? I'm not sure.

According to the official Recovery.gov website, $16 billion worth of contracts have been awarded, of which $ 2.2 billion already was received. And, as of early October, the same website says 30,383 jobs were created or saved as a result of directly awarded money (additional jobs could have been added as a result of other stimulus spending). The White House believes that each new job reported creates one further indirect job.

That means that each job cost $ 267,000 per awarded funding or about $ 36,000 for funding already received. Or, without the assumed job multiplier, twice those figures (about $ 533,000/$ 72,000).

I have no idea which number is right. Nor, I think, does anyone else. Bueller?

9 comments:

O Bloody Hell said...

> Bueller?

Considering who was saying that line, a most amusing choice of quote.

@nooil4pacifists said...

I wondered whether anyone would pick up on that. . .

MaxedOutMama said...

That's hilarious. I downloaded the primary spreadsheet and looked at it.

The vast majority of the jobs created or retained came from the very small overall amounts dedicated to military construction and renovation projects.

MaxedOutMama said...

Economically speaking, the "or retained" part makes no sense in most cases. They basically wanted a list of who was working on the projects, but just because someone was working on a project doesn't mean they would have lost their job if the project wasn't there.

The numbers don't mean anything, really. Because most of the actual jobs came in from construction, they are temp anyway (although the construction component actually IS A REAL STIMULUS).

Figure an upper limit of 20,000 jobs.

@nooil4pacifists said...

M_O_M:

So now we know--no stimulus, or jobs, for us.

OBloodyHell said...

> So now we know--no stimulus, or jobs, for us.

I dunno, Carl, about the "for us" part -- I suspect many of Obama's policies will substantially increase jobs for attorneys for decades. Might require a change of specialization for some attorneys, but I think his policies'll be a definite stimulus to legal employment all around...

:oD

.

@nooil4pacifists said...

No increased billings for this attorney so far.

suek said...

No increased employment for you if you're non-union anyway. Of course, since only about 8.6% of workers in the US are union members, the increased employment is rather limited...

OBloodyHell said...

>>>> No increased billings for this attorney so far.

I DID say:

> Might require a change of specialization for some attorneys, but I think his policies'll be a definite stimulus to legal employment all around...

If you want more billings, you need to specialize in racial reparations and restitution for workplace racial violations, like, oh, "Can you push that black file cabinet into place for me?"

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LOL, no sh**, the word verif is "filde"