ARRA Jobs Number is Still Questionable.

The last sentence of my post of October 30, 2009 was: "The bottom line is this: While ARRA may be a wonderful thing, no one should take any report of jobs created or retained because of the stimulus package to be anything more than a guess."

No less a person that Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board, agrees. The New York Times quoted Mr. Devaney, in testimony before Congress, as saying “I have no doubt that there’s a lot of jobs being created. I think it could be above or below 640. I think missing reports might drive the job numbers up, and I think there’s enough inaccuracies in here to question if the 640 number might go down.”

640? Remember the Obama administrations' loud trumpeting of the creation (or saving) of 640,000 jobs with the stimulus package?

Missing reports? Duh. Even Mr. Devaney admits that up to ten percent (10%) of the required reports on jobs have still not been filed. The deadline was when? October 10? I guess 90% compliance is not so bad for more than a month past the reporting deadline. Think the IRS would be so kind to any of us who reported a month late on our taxes?

Back to the numbers for a moment, GAO (according to the Times)found "that 58,386 of the jobs were being claimed by recipients who had not reported spending any money; on the other hand, recipients who had received nearly $1 billion had claimed no jobs at all." They also believe that errors in undercounting may be offset by errors in overcounting. Sounds to me like creative accounting, much like what Enron did to show its profitability. But far be it from me to insinuate that anything connected with the federal government might be less than completely honest.