Jobs Hokum

THIS IS A GUEST POST BY READER MORGAN


As if the old Obama job metrics weren’t laughable enough, the administration added a new one, "jobs supported".  The White House explains it this way: 

The American Jobs Act Will Support Nearly 400,000 Education Jobs--Preventing Layoffs and Allowing Thousands More to Be Hired or Rehired: The President’s plan will more than offset projected layoffs, providing support for nearly 400,000 education jobs--enough for states to avoid harmful layoffs and rehire tens of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs over the past three years.

If you don’t think about it, or if you’re a leftist ideologue, it makes sense.  On the other hand, Chuck Blahous thinks the numbers are illogical and irrelevant:

[E]ven if numbers of "jobs at risk" were correct, this would tell us nothing about the desirability of the Administration’s proposed policy response. The figures presented effectively describe a set of assumptions about state budgets; they carry no hard information about the efficacy of the AJA.

Things are obviously getting desperate at the White House.  They've already invented job metrics that, at best, are silly and unsupported:

Current Obama Job Metrics

Jobs we'd have if it wasn't for Bush

Jobs saved or created

Jobs supported

The mind boggles at what may be next in Obama's jobs lexicon if unemployment gets even worse:

Theoretical New Obama Job Metrics

Jobs we'd have if everybody would just listened to me.  I went to Harvard. 

Average number of jobs created per state, multiplied by 57

Jobs we Hope™ to have

Jobs Joe Biden thinks we have

Jobs we’d have if green jobs count double

Jobs we’d have cleaning up after OWS if it spread to every city, town and village

Jobs we’d have if minority jobs counted triple.  (Asians excluded)

Jobs we’d have if college tuition were free and everybody quit their jobs to go to  back to school

Manufacturing jobs we’d have if every household earning more than $250,000 had to buy a Chevy Volt.

Jobs we'd have if all the millionaires and billionaires dropped dead and we had to bury them

Green jobs we’d have if all able bodied citizens were mandated to run to work wearing propeller beanies that charged molten-salt batteries in their fanny packs.

Jobs we’d have tending herds of unicorns if global warming hadn’t brutally murdered them

Jobs than can dance on the head of a pin

Jobs are a capitalist plot against humanity

Peek-a-boo ... look at my shiny car keys.

(via Hot Air)