Contractors report generating tens of thousands of jobs under stimulus

Contractors that received stimulus funds used that money to save or create more than 30,000 jobs as of Oct. 10, according to recipient reports released on Thursday. The release marks the first time since the start of the stimulus effort that recipient data was collected and posted to Recovery.gov.

So far, recipients have filed reports on 47,176 awards, of which 5,232 were federal contracts, 41,575 were grants and 369 were loans. But the initial data release contains information only on data filed between Oct. 1 and Oct. 10 by recipients of federal contracts. Final contract data and information on grants and loans -- which make up a far more significant portion of the stimulus spending -- will be released on Oct. 30.

The initial round of data showed that most stimulus contractors had yet to start on their projects or were less than halfway done. About 31 percent of recipients had not begun work and only 18 percent of projects had been completed.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which is responsible for overseeing the stimulus and managing Recovery.gov, noted on the home page of the stimulus-tracking Web site that data from two of the 5,232 federal contract recipient reports was being withheld "until the two recipients can correct their obviously incorrect submissions." Their job creation numbers were not included in the total of 30,383. The board did not respond to requests for more information.

White House Chief Economist Jared Bernstein noted that the data released on Thursday accounts for only a small portion of the stimulus spending, but nonetheless was optimistic about the numbers.

"It is too soon to draw any global conclusions from this partial and preliminary data, as it reports on just $16 billion of the $339 billion in Recovery Act efforts before Sept. 30, but the early indications are quite positive," Bernstein said in a statement. "The direct count by Recovery Act recipients of jobs created or saved from this small percentage of the Recovery Act exceeds our projections."

While the Obama administration touted the number of jobs created even from a small sliver of the stimulus effort, critics wondered if taxpayers got enough bang for the buck. For each created or saved job reported by these recipients, more than $500,000 was awarded and more than $70,000 was received.

The relationship between funds received and jobs created or saved varied by state. In four of the five states that received the most in federal contracting stimulus dollars, it cost more than the average $70,000 to create a single job. Contractors from South Carolina received $1.5 million for each job created or saved, while companies in Rhode Island received $500,000 in federal stimulus contracts and created only 5.93 jobs.

"It's kind of disappointing how few jobs we got just for this little $17 billion example," said Rea Hederman, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "Only $2 billion has already been [received by the contractors], but you'd still expect a little bit more of a return."

Craig Jennings, senior federal fiscal policy analyst at the nonprofit OMB Watch, warned that the data released Thursday might have been skewed by projects outside the shovel-ready realm most expect will constitute the bulk of the stimulus spending. He noted that one of the largest contracts was for the cleanup for a nuclear facility, a project that would be far more expensive per job created than laying concrete or repairing a bridge.

"What we're seeing in the contracts are kind of outliers," Jennings said. "So I'm cautioning everyone that you really can't draw any conclusions from what we're seeing today. After we get more data it will be more reasonable to make those kinds of analyses."

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