There are an increasing number of articles indicating that the Obama administration's job stimulus numbers are pure illusions, but the mainstream media has not evaluated his numbers (as they did in the previous Bush administration). Forbes has a good article on this phenomenon--there is no way to know if a job has been saved or created. Recently the administration and news outlets were praising the drop in unemployment numbers, but as I recall during the Bush administration, these numbers would always be qualified with a statement such as "the numbers don't include those who have given up looking." So we have all these numbers floating around, but the bottom-line is that no one can say for sure if things are better or worse.
Dems say things are better, but Rush and Hannity are pointing out the problems. But the truth, for both supporters and opponents of the stimulus legislation, is that the exact effect of the stimulus and the precise number of jobs created or saved can never be known.
A WSJ article compares how the media dealt with Bush employment figures compared to its coverage of the Obama administration numbers.
From the American Heritage Foundation.
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We in the Pennsylvania Dept. of Community & Economic Development use "jobs created" and "jobs saved" as data points when evaluating projects for funding. However, these numbers are self-reported by the borrower and rarely (if ever) audited. Our Democratic governor uses these numbers widely in press releases and speeches. I wonder how long it will be until we've created more jobs than we have workers in the state.
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