Once Again, Job Numbers Aren’t Adding Up

Even in the same story!

Mr Obama said the projects would provide more than 5,000 new jobs.

Hmmm…

According to the company’s website, 1,500 new jobs will be created during the plant’s construction with 100 positions for staff to maintain it.

[...]

Plants will be built in Colorado and Indiana, creating 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs, the Associated Press reports.

Ok, so I guess Obama is right.  This will allegedly “create” more than 5,000 jobs.  5,100, to be precise.  Of course, only about 1,600 of those will be permanent - assuming that the private sector will adopt what the government stimulus is creating.  Otherwise, it’ll take yet more taxpayer money or those jobs will go away. 

Meanwhile, let’s evaluate the cost… for 5,100 jobs - only 1,600 of which are more than temporary, it will cost $392,157 per job.  Wow. 

Finally, I’m glad the story mentioned this:

Around 125,000 jobs were lost in the last month, the government reported.

As we saw with the Bucyrus fiasco, the green initiatives do come at a cost of other sectors of the economy.  It’s hard for me to get excited about spending nearly $400k per job when we lost 125,000 jobs in the last month.  Perhaps a more viable structural solution is in order.