Consumers Aren't Buying Stimulus Jobs "Success"

I'm getting sick and tired of everyone talking about how much worse shape we would be in, but for (fill in the blank: TARP, stimulus, auto bail outs...) Even if it's true, it doesn't make anyone feel better. That's what I keep thinking when Obama Administration officials sound like cheerleaders claiming victory over job creation that occurred as a result of the $787 billion stimulus.

A White House report will be released later today and it's expected to show that the stimulus plan helped create or save 650,000 jobs through September 30th. One might want to take these numbers with a grain of salt, after digesting the AP report, which suggested that the folks who are providing the data to the White House can't seem to add or subtract too well. The AP analysis calls into question any of the official numbers, though the White House countered it by saying that the AP examination only represented 2% of Recovery Act spending. Kind of like how political polls only represent only a sliver of the population, from which we extrapolate larger trends, but that must different, right?

As my niece would say, whatever. Whether the numbers are mathematically challenged or not, the job situation is dreadful and not improving soon enough to satisfy Americans. That's why they retrenched on spending last month. Personal spending dropped 0.5% in September, the steepest decline since 12/08 when we were in the eye of the recession's storm. Consumers are all too aware that jobs are scarce and those who are lucky enough to have them know that flat income is better than no income.

So, please no cheers for Q3 GDP or for stimulus job creation just yet. We're happy that the worst appears to be behind us, but recovery is a process, not an event and we have a long way to go.

Image by Flickr User uwdigitalcollections, CC 2.0

Follow Jill Schlesinger on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jillonmoney

Comments

[quietfortoolong2]

Is it me or are people just oblivious to how much worse the current situation would be without the stimulus? People love to point out how the nation did not recover fully from the Great Depression until WWII, without realizing that what happened then was not that consumers said, "hey, we're at war, let's go shopping", but rather that the US Gov't went on a massive spending spree. What makes people think we will be fine coming out of this latest economic collapse without...­equally massive government spending?? No, we don't have a huge world war to fight (we do have 2 smaller ones, though), so the good news is that said massive gov't spending could be directed at home on infrastructure projects and countless other domestic priorities. The stimulus bill was about half of the size it should have been.

The other thing I find ironic is the people who complain that any stimulus will put our children in debt...yet they fail to consider the alternative: the millions of children who either won't exist because families can't afford to have them, or the countless others who will be born into poverty and die due to lack of food, health care, etc because their parents have no jobs.

Pull your heads out of your collective @ sses and understand that the short term harm caused by increased gov't spending will be offset by the long term gain of still having a US of A in 25 to 50 years.

[KingRex]

You've got that right Jill. Let's see the tally of the actual jobs that were created or saved. Few created and the rest are saved government jobs that are no economic engine but a drag on taxpayers. The administration touted the stimulus as producing 3.5 million jobs of which 90% would be private sector jobs. I think we'll see in the data that it might be closer to the opposite with 90+% government/public jobs and very few real jobs created. They have conveniently forgotten the details they projected for the plan and so has the media. So much for the real news reporters -let's not hold this President and Congress accountable! Sure we need to help the state governments, but that is not what they touted with the Jobs Stimulus package. Call it what it really is - a Government Support Package. Everyone else wait for jobs from the normal course of recovery in 2013.

[bluevase]

Government jobs are also real jobs -- teachers, firemen, policemen, librarians, health care workers are public hospitals, road workers, public transit workers...­.
When people are employed, they have a pay check and perhaps they will spend it -- in their local communities, their local businesses, retail, grocery, auto, etc.

[KingRex]

They are not CREATED jobs. They saved the states due to revenue shortfall. My point is it is not economic stimulus and it was touted to CREATE private sector jobs. It is clear that is not the case. I suppose next year when the economy has 10+% unemployment they can lay off the government workers then.

[citipearl]

My son calculated that given the number of jobs saved vs what was spent should result in salaries for each of those saved jobs of $234,000.

Numbers and statistics can be manipulated. The hurt is still out here and saying that jobs have been saved when so many have been lost does not help much. Saying it could be worse is like telling a paraplegic he/she should be glad they're not a quadraplegic -- sure, you're better off but still in bad shape.