The federal government has allocated more than a third of the $787 billion in economic stimulus funds, and stimulus programs created roughly 600,000 jobs in the quarter that ended Dec. 31, according to new data posted on Recovery.gov, the stimulus oversight Web site.
The spending includes roughly $199 billion in contracts, grants and loans, and about $93 billion in tax cuts. Most of the spending came in the form of grants — and nearly half of those came from the Education Department, which has awarded roughly $71.5 billion so far.
Critics say the jobs numbers are still imprecise. Craig Jennings, a fiscal policy analyst with the nonprofit OMB Watch, says the data should present the number of hours worked, rather than the number of full-time jobs created, since the definition of full-time job varies from state to state; the data should also try to include qualitative measures, like whether jobs provide benefits, Jennings said.
One new report, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, concluded the job numbers might be too low: The report found that 84 percent of stimulus spending to date — tax relief, entitlement spending and direct payments to states — is not covered by Recovery reporting. "There is substantial reason to believe that this 84 percent includes some of the most effective job-creation and job-protection measures," the report said.
