Bad Touch?

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Jobs created or estimated - Brief article

HOW MUCH stimulus money does it take to create one job? At the Department of Energy, the average price of a job created is $194,213. According to the agency's own reports, as of May it had spent $1.9 billion in stimulus funds to create 10,018 jobs.

But don't call them jobs created, or even jobs saved or funded. The department prefers the phrase "lives touched" That terminology lets it count people who "supported" any project funded with stimulus dollars as well as individuals whose fulltime employment was funded with stimulus money. Because the agency relies heavily on subcontractors, this approach gives the department's job creation figures a big bump; of the 10,018 jobs it reports having created, just 5,655 went to full-time contractors.

That's if you believe the count at all. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in...