White House’s New Job Count Rules
Despite soaring unemployment rates, the Obama administration persistently alleges that the stimulus plan has been a success. According to Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economics Advisors:
The most important bottom line is to say that close to 2 million jobs have been created or saved by the close of 2009, a truly stunning . . . effect of the act.
In reality, the unemployment rate remains at 10 percent. Since the passing of the stimulus bill, Americans have lost 2.7 million jobs. In fact, 85,000 jobs were lost in December alone. So how can the Obama administration continue to report that nearly two million jobs have been “created or saved?” It’s simple. They have now altered the way in which “saved” jobs are calculated. The Associated Press explains their latest counting method:
Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It’s no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus.
This new method of counting “saved” jobs will likely lead to even more misleading and inflated statistics from the White House. The White House’s deceptive statistics now include any person that has received stimulus funding, regardless if their job would have been lost without the stimulus money. The Associated Press’ article adds:
That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.
It is time for the White House to stop reporting fallacious statistics. The Obama administration should be sincere with the American people. The truth is that Obama’s stimulus plan is failing to live up to his expectations of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. If the current trend continues, we may lose 3.5 million jobs by the conclusion of 2010.
