Stimulus Report: 4 Million Jobs "Lost and Dislocated"

STIMULUS REPORT:4 MILLION JOBS

“

LOST AND DISLOCATED

”

- 2 -© American Solutions 2009

Making No Difference:

4 Million Jobs

“Lost and

Dislocated

”

Across America, people are out of work. From New York to Los Angeles; from Seattle to Miami

–

Americanshave still not seen the job growth promised under the $787 billion stimulus passed in February. Promisingthat it would provide an immediate boost to the economy, the Obama administration has instead presidedover escalating unemployment with no real solutions for creating jobs.

Since passing the stimulus, the Obama administration has taken every opportunity to take credit for “saved jobs” in the economy, even though there is no way to measure “saved jobs.” The term itself is unknown

even to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the office that measures the unemployment rate. Search economics

textbooks across the country, and you will find one common theme: there is no such thing as a “saved job.”

Taking

credit for “saved jobs”

contrasts with

the administration’s

promise of unprecedented transparencyand accountability, not to mention honesty and responsibility.As the Obama administration has toured the country searching for working Americans whose jobs they canclaim they saved, the economic reality is clear: unemployment is 25% higher than what the administrationclaimed it would reach under the stimulus. Rather than creating jobs, the stimulus diverted money fromtaxpayers into a bureaucratic boondoggle with no real job growth to show for it.

The administration has claimed that the stimulus “saved or created” at least 1 million jobs. But

there is noguarantee that the government actually creates a job when it spends stimulus money. There is no way of knowing whether a worker or a company that is engaged in a stimulus project would have without work orengaged in some other activity. But we do know that as the economy picks up, those doing work onstimulus projects will not be available for more productive private sector activity. The greater the numberof these dislocated workers, the greater the challenge of finding work for them when the stimulus moneyruns out. Thus every time you hear the stimulus has

“

saved or created

”

a job, then you know what thelatest figures are on dislocated workers. The latest word from the White House was that the stimuluspackage had

“

saved or created

”

1 million jobs. When combined with the 3.2 million jobs lost sinceFebruary, the

total

number of jobs

“

lost and dislocated

”

under the stimulus is more than 4 million

.The best way to reach the end of this turbulent road is to put our faith back in American businesses andentrepreneurs, not in more government control and more centralized power financed by borrowed money.The economy grows best when government bureaucrats do not pick winners and losers and spend future

generations’ money on failed programs

.Vince HaleyVice President for PolicyAmerican Solutions

- 3 -© American Solutions 2009

INTRODUCTION

“One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called ‘jobssaved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason: how can anyone know that his or her jobhas been saved?”

—

Dr. Allan MeltzerAs you travel across the country, you can see numerous Recovery Act projectsigns that suggest the stimulus is working. But press releases disguised asprogress indicates nothing about job creation or the effectiveness of a $787billion, government-controlled intrusion into the economy. Stimulus

“successstories” from the

Obama administration can be grouped into several areas.

Broken Promises

are those statements that projected positive impacts from thestimulus that never came to fruition.

Distortions

and

Misleading Information

are when the administration claims to

have “saved or created” jobs, even though there is no way to measure this.

Reality Checks

are wake up calls about how bad the economy has continued tobe, despite the massive stimulus.Some stories demonstrate a complete

Lack of Accountability

on the part of theObama administration, notably with regard to previous claims about future jobcreation.Travel along with us on an odyssey of false hope and escalating unemployment, a journey with rheto

rical twists and turns that demonstrates the administration’s

inability to create jobs with $787 billion in taxpayer money.