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Obama Stimulus created or "saved" 2 million jobs

Only in America, only under the Obama Administration. That's the only way to explain the extraordinary impact of the Obama Stimulus. Because the White House is now claiming that 2 million jobs have been created or saved because of the Obama Stimulus.

This announcement comes in the face of an unemployment rate of 10%, a surprise loss of 85,000 jobs in the traditional job friendly month of December, and while there are an average of 6 Americans competeing for every job available.

Chart of number of people competing for each job available

Economists for President Obama counter that their analysis shows that without the Stimulus unemployment would be worse by 2 million people and the national growth rate would be 2% lower. These are the same economists that approved the Obama Stimulus, claiming that it would restrict unemployment to 8% and stimulate the ecomony into a recovery in late 2009 - early 2010.

The successes of the Obama Stimulus can be quantified by Recovery.org. Over 600,000 jobs are shown to have been created or save by the data contained on this site - all directly tied to the Stimulus. That same data was created by including calculations that count a raise as a percentage of a job saved. In addition, news media organizations across the nation have found numerous problems with the data. The errors include reports of more jobs created that employees in some companies and fictional Congressional Districts being created and receiving funds among some of the highlights. In fact some news organizations have claimed the reported numbers are "wildly" inaccuruate.

The success of the Obama Stimulus is perhaps most apparent when considered in conjunction with the Jobs for Main Street Act. This Act seeks to create at least another $75 billion in new stimulus spending for job-creation measures, including tax breaks for hiring, additional public works spending and other items. These are issues that the Obama Stimulus was stated to be directly confronting. These items are part of the "success" of the Obama Stimulus in creating or "saving" a now claimed 2 million jobs.

Heidi Shierholz, an economist at Economic Policy Institute in Washington said

"the economy faces a "jobs gap" of almost 10 million -- the 7.2 million jobs lost plus the roughly 125,000 per month that would have been needed since the recession began just to keep up with population growth."

That would mean some 500,000 new jobs would need to be created every month for 20 months. That rate of job growth is roughly the same as the growth of 1950 - 51. It's a pace not seen in over 50 years under even the explosive positive economics of the Internet and real estate bubbles or recent years. It is also a rate of growth that won't occur in 2010 as economists estimate a reduction in the unemployment rate for the year to equal 1%, to a net 9% after Government stimulus spending in excess of $350 billion this year.

But the White House is full of blister on how successful the Obama Stimulus has been. At the same time some 5 million Americans are looking for jobs and wondering where exactly that success is.