Thursday, October 29, 2009

30,000 stimulus jobs figure is way off the mark

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs downplayed errors in job counts identified by the AP's review, telling reporters, "We're talking about 4,000, or a 5,000 error."

The AP reviewed a sample of federal contracts, not all 9,000 reported to date, and discovered errors in one in six jobs credited to the $787 billion stimulus program — or nearly 5,000 of the 30,000 jobs claimed so far.

Even in its limited review, the AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

Those errors were included in an early progress report on the stimulus released two weeks ago that featured numerous mistakes, including a Colorado business' claim that its stimulus contract created more than 4,200 jobs. In fact, the actual count was less than 1,000.

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