The theme of this story is that a recent government report overstated (surprise!) the number of jobs “saved or created” by the stimulus spending. It turns out that the report includes double counting, giving people raises instead of creating jobs, and so on. But the real headline should be about this:
There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
On it’s way? Are they kidding? Who cares whether it’s 30,000 or 25,000 (the “real” number). The economy creates and destroys millions of jobs every month. Thirty thousand jobs is a rounding error. It’s irrelevant.
