White House Calculates Stimulus Jobs

The stimulus created or saved at least 650,000 jobs, according to a report released by the White House on Friday. The report was based on $150 billion from the $339 billion in spending from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, so the White House believes that the final tally will likely be closer to 1 million jobs. The report is the first broad look at the effects of the stimulus on the U.S. economy. On Friday afternoon, the administration will post the complete report online. The numbers haven't been easy to compile, because the calculation—spanning state and local data, part-time and short-time jobs—is complicated. One government-spending expert predicted "a lot of discrepancies in the data" not due to "malicious intent, but because of the complexity."