STIMULUS WATCH: White House changes job-count rule

[The Northerner]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.

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.

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.

The new rules, quietly published last month in a memorandum to federal agencies, mark the White House's latest response to criticism about the way it counts jobs credited to the stimulus. When The Associated Press first reported flaws in the job counts in October, the White House said errors were being corrected and future counts would provide a full and correct accounting of just how many stimulus jobs were saved or created.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100113/ap_on_bi_ge/us_stimulus_counting_jobs

[saracat]

1. Strategic Ambiguity as ordered by Rahm.

Employess who transfer laterally within the government will also be counted twice!

[leftynyc]

8. Is there a link

to where it can be explained what Rahm had to do with this?

[saracat]

11. I haven't read it but his office is in charge of supervising of the

Jobs Bill, Recovery Act and the Stimulus. They work in conjunction with Peter Orzog and the office of the VP.

[leftynyc]

13. So Rahm tied up the President

threw him into a closet and made this decision himself? Wow - that's bold.

[saracat]

16. Not at all. I just know from his staff that this is admin policy.

The first round of number crunching didn't work and despite complaints to the contrary, this was the procedure put into place.

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. No need. Anything negative associated with the Administration is automatically Rahm's fault

[flyarm]

2. More of that "change" we can't believe in! eom

[grasswire]

3. this is the most disheartening move yet

It makes me very depressed and sad. I thought we Democrats were better than this kind of obfuscation.

[pundaint]

4. It's better to sound mahvelous than to be mahvelous.

Could George Orwell have been more correct?

[No Elephants]

5. Orwell? That was Billy Crystal.

;-)

[SkyDaddy7]

6. The CBO said the stimulus bill saved or created...

at least 1.6 million jobs...Far more than the Obama Admin claimed. So, I have no idea what the point to this article is. It does not matter what method anyone uses the stimulus has helped...It should have been much bigger but there simply was not the votes to pass a bigger stimulus bill.

[Igel]

9. It pays to cite accurately.

The CBO gave a range of jobs saved/created and a number that said how confidence it was that the *real* number was in that range. The 1.6 million number was the top of the range given, but it's possible it was higher. The lower number was something like 600k, and it's also possible that the true number was lower.

However, there's always the question as to how it defined jobs. Lots of jobs are short-term. You're hired to fill the potholes on Main Street. Three weeks later, they're filled. That's one job. Then you're hired to fill the potholes on 1st Avenue. Three weeks later they're filled. That's another job. Wow! Two jobs. For 6 weeks' pay.

The way they should have done it was to have people report how many $30k full-time jobs they created or saved. Then all the job numbers would have been normalized, and we'd be able to compare and judge.

This makes it even harder to judge. That's probably the idea. They don't like people looking over their shoulder. They don't like criticism. Nobody does. But most people learn to deal with it by doing other than preventing it by making things more opaque.

[SkyDaddy7]

10. That's the GOP's arguement...

And you seem to agree. I don't! It is obvious you will argue, like the GOP, that nothing Obama does or says is true or will help. Lets keep it real!

[saracat]

17. Yeppers and it also gives them the ability to cite one person as two.

and count what is really a single employ twice in order to inflate the numbers. it also provides an ability to count exosting job as "new".

[Doctor_J]

7. I blasted Smirk when he changed the way employment was counted

this is discouraging

[xchrom]

14. Oddly enough I haven't the foggiest

As to what this actually means.

[OhioChick]

18. You're not alone.

:crazy:

[high density]

15. AP just trying to confuse everybody and make everybody mad

One upon a time this was left to the likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly.