Stimulus Effects Question In Mass

[discocrisco01]

The Boston Globe reports(http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/11/11/stimulus_fund_job_benefits_exaggerated_review_finds?mode=PF)

"While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The Globe’s finding is based on the federal government’s just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually - subsidies for affordable housing, for example - was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports"

I have seen these type of reports coming up through the news. It is either (i) the subject type of stimulus does not save a significant amount of jobs or (ii) the stimulus was not properly written to address job loss and therefore, it did not save a significant amount of jobs.

My gut feeling is that the stimulus was not properly written to address job loss and could have been significantly strengthen to address the considerable job loss in the country.