Stimulus created 600,000 jobs at the end of 2009, White House says

The Federal Eye reports in Monday's Washington Post:

The Obama administration's economic stimulus program created nearly 600,000 jobs in the final three months of 2009, a figure in line with the administration's goals for job creation through the end of 2010, the White House reported Saturday night.

The new total was down from the totals reported for the previous quarter, partly because the administration decided in December to count only the jobs paid for with stimulus funding instead of estimating the number of jobs "created or saved" with the money.

Critics had panned the "created or saved" measurement as a subjective and confusing way of determining the program's success.

The federal government on Saturday released about 160,000 quarterly spending reports from stimulus recipients representing about one-fifth of the program's spending. Federal law requires the release of reports covering infrastructure and education spending. Officials said new safeguards should help avoid the mistakes discovered in last fall's first batch of information.

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