7,500 jobs in state linked to stimulus

Ted Mann

Oct. 31, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- HARTFORD -- The federal economic stimulus package has helped create or retain more than 7,500 jobs in Connecticut, the Obama administration reported Friday, citing reports from the companies and state agencies that have received some of the $160 billion already distributed nationwide.

The administration's job figure is even higher than that reported earlier in the week by Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office. The Rell administration said slightly more than 6,000 jobs had been retained or created by the infusion of education and infrastructure funding in the stimulus bill, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Nationwide, the Obama administration estimates that the stimulus has already saved more than 1 million jobs, advisers said in a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon.

Grant recipients, including towns, states and individual contractors, reported about 640,000 jobs created or retained thanks to the $160 billion spent directly so far on "programs and activities." Such direct spending will eventually come to $339 billion, or about 35 percent of the total value of the stimulus bill, which also included tax cuts, Medicaid funding and "stabilization" grants to state governments to balance their budgets.

"These are jobs the recovery act is keeping in the economy or bringing into the economy," said Ed DeSeve, a senior adviser to the president for implementation of the stimulus bill.

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, told reporters that critics of the stimulus program who had questioned job-creation reports were engaged in "calculator abuse."

That was a reaction in part to criticism from Republicans in Congress and a report by the Associated Press that previous estimates of job creation related to the stimulus have been vastly overstated or inaccurate. Spokesmen for the White House have said the numbers are being carefully fact-checked and inaccuracies corrected.

While the administration is still bracing for potentially gloomy unemployment numbers next week and faces an uphill climb to reverse job-loss trends, the stimulus has prevented a far greater economic collapse, Bernstein contended.

"The recovery act cannot fully offset the impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression," he said. "That's going to be true across the country."

"Take the recovery act out of the picture," he added moments later, "... and the U.S. economy would have been flat-lining."

In Connecticut, the numbers are welcome news for officials who have overseen the distribution of stimulus funds for everything from road paving to water purification to direct aid to local school districts.

And they are also at pains to make sure citizens know what the stimulus package is, and what it isn't, said Matt Fritz, a special assistant to Rell who serves as the transparency officer for the team charged with doling out the federal aid.

"The word 'stimulus' has put an impression in people's mind that it's going to be instantaneous," Fritz said Friday in an interview. "As everyone was developing these lists of what was shovel-ready, they were starting to think of this as the next New Deal. It is not the next New Deal; it's the Recovery Act. It's not laden with infrastructure like it was originally proposed to be."

Instead, Fritz noted, the stimulus was heavily weighted toward other spending, which helped the state and local governments avoid even larger deficits, service cuts and tax increases.

"The fiscal stabilization piece for education is a huge piece of it," Fritz said. "The same thing for the Medicaid dollars. That is one third of all the money we're going to receive.

"Without those significant chunks of recovery act dollars coming in, who knows what the budget situation would look like?" he added.

According to Connecticut statistics, state agencies here have received a total of $1.06 billion in stimulus funding so far, and expended $968 million of that amount. The expenditures include nearly $500 million to help support Medicaid and other entitlement expenses, and almost $375 million in unemployment benefits.

Connecticut's job totals are predominantly retained jobs, Fritz said, and overwhelmingly in education and schools, areas that were spared significant funding cuts by the infusion of federal aid.

Of more than 6,000 jobs retained, according to state figures (which were presented to policy makers earlier this week, before the latest federal statistics were released), nearly 5,300 were in education.

Neither the Republican governor's staff nor the Democratic president's conceded a distinction between the stimulus bill's creation of new jobs and its assistance in retaining existing ones.

"To the people who have those jobs, it doesn't make a lick of difference whether those jobs are saved or created," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House's deputy communications director.

Meanwhile, Fritz said job numbers in Connecticut could be larger than the federal reporting makes them appear.

Since the stimulus calculations measure full-time equivalent positions, the jobs report numbers are lower than the number of workers actually on the job.

Based on OMB requirements, there are 110 full-time equivalent jobs created by transportation infrastructure projects so far, Fritz noted. But at the 38 highway and bridge projects under contract, roughly 2,600 workers have collected paychecks, Fritz said.

Similarly, the 575 full-time equivalent jobs credited to summer youth employment programs this year were actually smaller payments made to 4,100 young people, state figures show.

"Without the recovery act, how many of those people would have collected a paycheck over the summer?" Fritz said.

Friday's numbers were released as part of the stimulus bill's unusually stringent reporting requirements. Recipients of federal aid under the act are required to report quarterly to the Office of Management and Budget on the extent of their projects and their job creation.

To review area agencies and projects that have received money through the stimulus program, go to: www.recovery.gov/transparency.

t.mann@theday.com

Newstex ID: KRTB-0139-39407284