Sunday, November 8, 2009

640,00 Jobs sAved...Maybe Not

The well worn adage that you can make statistics say anything was given further proof with last week; saved jobs announcement from the White House. The Associated Press, hardly a right wing operation, reported gross counting errors which inflated the supposed jobs saved to 640,000. Some highlights:
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.... director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved.

"I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given."

Turns out pay raises count as jobs saved.

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

Really? Are we seriously to believe this rationalization?

[Ben Allen, the research director at the National Head Start Association] said a cost-of-living adjustment "may not be viewed traditionally as a job saved, but one could interpret it that [way].

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.

1 comments:

Name: Soapboxgod said...

The problem is not the way the numbers were presented. The problem is with the whole premise to begin with. This whole notion of jobs saved is a canard. It attempts to prove a negative.

 
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