Stimulus Package Has Created Jobs; Kind Of
The White House announced that their $787 billion stimulus package has actually created almost 683,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year.
Well, that’s not quite what they said. They said the package “funded” that many jobs, and that’s an important distinction to make. In other words, these are jobs that were either created or protected by the money. It’s kind of the same way that unemployment figures are given; there’s no real way to know who’s still unemployed once people drop off the rolls, so they can only give you the figure based on how many people are collecting unemployment at the time.
It’s not that I’m looking to negate what stimulus money has done, because I believe the federal government should have a hand in helping some communities get things back together. I am not on the side of Rep. Darrell Issa from California, who was quoted as saying “The American people reject the Administration’s claims on stimulus job creation and the flawed economic theory behind the assertion that massive deficit spending would fix our economy.”
I still believe that there needs to be some sort of way to stimulate the economy so that real new jobs can be created and get people working once more. Some types of jobs aren’t coming back, but it doesn’t mean we, the United States, don’t have enough ingenuity to come up with the next big thing. And while we’re at it, we can’t hurt some of those industries that we rely on now, such as every agricultural group that grows or takes care of something that we benefit nutritionally from on the back end.
I applaud the government for what they’re trying to do so far; now let’s kick it up a notch and really focus on real job creation.
Mitch Reply:
May 4th, 2010 at 1:20 PM
I feel you, Tim. What I think we do know is that, for sure, the stimulus has kept the unemployment rate down in some fashion, since, if you remember, it was predicted that it could get as high as 12%. It’s the “new” jobs part that I’m doubting. For instance, there’s a group whose board I’m on. They got some stimulus money, and what it’s allowed is the ability to hire a full time and part time person and retain a position that was potentially on the chopping block. In this instance, 1 1/2 jobs were really created, but one was just saved. Figures sometimes can be twisted, as we know.