August 24, 2009
by Warner Todd Huston
One of the first states to attempt to tally the “new jobs” that Obama’s stimulus created has issued its first report and the news is rather discreditable to say the least. New Hampshire’s Director of the Economic Stimulus, Bud Fitch, recently put out his report and he is asserting that the stimulus “saved” or created 796 jobs in all of the state. Naturally 700 of those jobs were government jobs.
New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed economist Brian Gottlob who warned that the supposed 700 jobs saved, nearly all were in education, were probably not jobs on the chopping block in the first place. So to say that these jobs were “saved” is a bit absurd.
Gottlob says that few of these jobs in education would have been cut because the budgets would have been found to keep them stimulus or no. It is infrequent that state jobs in education have been cut in the past, according to Gottlob, so to say that the stimulus “saved” these jobs is not very credible.
The method of counting the jobs “created” by the stimulus is also rather suspect. All jobs, even part time or temporary, are counted as jobs “created” by the stimulus. But, in reality, a temporary job that lasts a few months or a part time job that has no future and no benefits aren’t really legitimate jobs.
Sadly, the method being used to count “new jobs” is a sham in and of itself. Instead of counting a full time job as a job created, the White House method is to add up all the hours worked by “new” employees, divide that by a full time work week and then claim that this is a job “created.” This is the sort of creative accounting work that lends truth to the saying that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”
But, let’s take at face value that the New Hampshire stimulus actually “created” 796 jobs with 700 of those being government jobs. Is this a good thing? Is it in any way stimulating the economy? Of course it isn’t. In fact, these 700 government jobs “saved” actually hurt the economy, not help it.