More Stimulus Job Numbers

Today's Union Leader provides another example of the government growing power of the stimulus bill. Despite a somewhat rosy headline ("State's stimulus benefit put at 3,007 jobs") the devil was in the details:

[Stimulus Czar Bud Fitch] said he favors a method that shows closer to 1,862 jobs were created or saved, based on an assumption that the jobs being counted are full-time and run for a full year. Fitch calculated that ARRA funds have paid for nearly 3.9 million hours of work since money began flowing in the spring.

So far, New Hampshire has taken in grants and contracts worth $407 million from a total of $965 million that has been authorized to date. The funds include money used in state government, aid to local school districts and nearly $20 million in a $25 weekly add-on to unemployment benefits. ...

Fitch's report shows that the bulk of jobs affected by ARRA funding are in education, with 2,041 jobs created or saved under the OMB formula.

Another 745 are in government agencies.Despite the hectic pace of road construction around the state, the formula shows only 116 jobs saved or created under stimulus funding.

At best, then, the numbers show that we are averaging $135,000 per each job saved or created, much worse if we base the math off of Fitch's more conservative estimate.

Even worse, NowHampshire.com reports:

President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly known as the stimulus act, created or saved only 221 private sector jobs between February 17th and September 30th NowHampshire.com has learned. ...

According to a report issued on Tuesday by Orville “Bud” Fitch, Governor John Lynch’s designated “stimulus czar,” the stimulus has financed 3,872,686 hours of work in the Granite State. However, the huge majority of the “Full-Time Equivalent” jobs appended to those hours – around 93% of all stimulus jobs, in fact — are government jobs through the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.