Early figures released by a government oversight board Thursday show that federal stimulus spending to date has created 30,000 jobs at private sector businesses.
The figures, from the independent Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, capture activity from only a very small slice of the $787 billion stimulus pie: Federal contracts totaling $16 billion. But they bolster the Obama Administration's assertion that the stimulus package has actually created jobs and thus blunted the severity of continuing job losses.
Critics have argued that the stimulus package is not worth its enormous cost and that the spending has merely padded public payrolls. While the numbers involved are too small to effectively rebut the first charge, they do rebut the second, for the reported jobs are all at private companies that have received contracts under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Reported jobs range from roof repairs to military buildings to large-scale cleanup of nuclear waste. The reported figures are in full-time equivalents, which the agency insisted on to prevent employers from using part-time jobs to inflate the numbers.
Equally significant is the fact that these figures are being collected at all. This represents the first effort by the government to track the actual effects of government spending. Figures to be released later this month will track local spending on stimulus projects; these are expected to show that the stimulus bill has saved a significant number of teaching jobs and created construction work all across the nation.
By Sandy Smith
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