Creative math used by Feds in job counting process

James C. Sandefer

Every time the general populace wants to believe a report coming out of Washington it seems to become mystically distorted into an exaggeration or outright falsehood. For example, consider the stimulus program intended to create and save jobs. Each month the Feds report numbers that are simply inaccurate, and at this point in the program they know it because every month another state reports that their numbers were inaccurate. Yet the Feds tend to become exuberant in their miscalculations.

The latest erroneous example is Colorado. Using your computer, click on the federal government’s stimulus-spending Web page and you’ll see that it displays 8,094 full-time jobs created or saved in that state. In actuality, the number is inflated by more than 1,000 jobs. According to the state it wasn’t their faulty, but merely the innocent result of incomprehensible reporting requirements required by the government, some unintentional inaccurate reporting, and a bit of fudging at several state-wide reporting agencies. This job creating and saving information was uncovered by a curious reporter with the Denver Post who did a modest amount of research.

Imagine what the numbers might actually be if newspapers nationwide assigned a team of diligent reporters to double-check the job counting numbers for their state?

Nonetheless, I’m sure some Nobel Prize winning mathematicians are stashed in a basement somewhere in Washington figuring out creative ways to continue reporting the success of the stimulus dollars used for manufacturing and saving jobs. Naturally, we trust the stringent criteria applied behind closed doors during the Nobel Prize selection process, so close your eyes and believe the numbers being fabricated by them. What have you got to lose?