As the 4th quarter of 2010 comes to a close, it’s time to compare stimulus predictions with actual results. In their January 2009 report “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” then Chair Nominee of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein of Vice President Joe Biden’s office predicted that the stimulus package would provide the following major economic results:
- 4th quarter 2010 unemployment would be 7 percent. Without the plan, unemployment would be 8.8 percent.
- Between 3.3 and 4.1 million jobs would be “created.”
Actual results according to the federal government’s own stimulus Web site Recovery.gov and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
- Current unemployment rate is 9.8 percent.
- Jobs “reported” (not necessarily “created”): 652,369
Truly staggering is the amount American taxpayers have paid for each job “reported.” Since President Obama signed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law in February 2009, the federal government has doled out $243,183,718,499 to all 50 states in the form of contracts, grants and loans. As posted above, states have reported 652,369 jobs. That comes to $372,770.15 per job “reported.” But not all jobs “reported” are equal. Some states have shown to be much more cost effective than others when it comes to ARRA jobs.
Top five most expensive states per job “reported”:
- West Virginia, $703,832.95 per job reported.
- Arizona, $701,608.64 per job reported.
- Delaware, $666,871.61 per job reported.
- Colorado, $658,037.18 per job reported.
- Illinois, $650,209.61 per job reported.
Top five least expensive states per job “reported.”
- Florida, $178,571.17 per job reported.
- Idaho, $188,747.12 per job reported.
- North Dakota, $250,318.51 per job reported.
- Georgia, $256,278.43 per job reported.
- Virginia, $263,305.90 per job reported.
To see how your state did with your money, visit our Your State on Stimulus Spending page. The information on jobs and stimulus dollars came directly from Recovery.gov.
Remember this is borrowed money, which we added to our national debt. Our kids will have to pay this back with interest so the real cost will be even higher than what is reported above.
[...] to completely wasting taxpayer money. Our resident transparency guru Amy Oliver wrote a fantastic blog post on Mothers Against Debt outlining how much each state spent to “report” a job “created” or [...]
December 23rd, 2010 at 3:30 pm