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How Do You Measure Jobs “Saved?”
By JLP | June 9, 2009
Reading assignment: The Media Fall for Phony ‘Jobs’ Claims
I know I’m probably going to catch some flack for linking to an anti-Obama opinion. But, if you read the piece, you will find that even Max Baucus (a Democrat) questions these “jobs saved” claims:
During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.
“You created a situation where you cannot be wrong,” said the Montana Democrat. “If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.”
Regardless of your politics, the opinion piece does raise an interesting question:
How do you measure “jobs saved?”
Topics: Miscellaneous | 10 Comments »
June 9th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Probably easier than measuring the number of lives saved from Terrorist attacks.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I wonder about this too. There are certainly some jobs truly being saved by the stimulus – at construction firms that would have closed, for instance. But I doubt these "saved or created" numbers are counting just those. They're probably looking at some kind of typical unemployment rate, or how fast the unemployment rate changes, and extrapolating from there. But at the same time, they're saying these are unprecedented times, so how can their typical formulas apply?
June 10th, 2009 at 12:25 am
How? You just pull an impressive number out of your … um … your ear. The more far fetched, the more likely the media will believe it.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:29 am
That actually is a much more quantifiable number than "jobs saved." If a terrorist planned to detonate an explosive device outside a sporting event and our enhanced interrogation techniques prevented the detonation, it's all a matter of statistics after that.
"Jobs created or saved" is a term that Obama coined to obfuscate matters. Heck, I can claim that I saved 10,500 jobs just today.
June 10th, 2009 at 1:19 am
I am curios about it as well. Just today on CNBC they asked some congresswoman or government spokesperson – missed the introduction – about it. She mention something about that the economists can figure it out, but since she is not an economist she cannot answer.
This is nice. I'd like to see the formula. Otherwise, as Ron said, we can all say we saved jobs. How many – the economists can figure it out…
June 10th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Is anyone surprised that the government (either a Dem or Repub) would create bogus figures to make themselves look better.
If you want to see some bogus numbers, look at how GDP and CPI are calculated. And, these are clearly stated as to how they are calculated. But, no one ever questions the changes made that clearly paint a better picture than actually exists. CPI includes hedonics, substitution and other items that reduce it artificially. And, the lower CPI makes GDP look bigger.
So don't be surprised at outlandish numbers by the gov. What is sad is how the press just accepts these numbers at face value.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Every number that comes out of a politician's mouth is a lie. Every time you hear about program costs, just double and triple it to get the real number.
Jobs saved, jobs created – it's not speculation, just political BS. But what makes it worse now, is that the media will not question their Savior's word
June 11th, 2009 at 3:35 am
The key to measuring jobs saved is that you put a very short time limit on it. Here in Columbus, Obama made a show out of saving 25 police officers jobs. Apparently that was for only about 5 months.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/26/ohio.stimu…
June 11th, 2009 at 5:40 am
You measure it by counting the number of rainbows Obama poops out and divide it by the number of unicorns he has hidden in the White House. You then multiply it by the number of times a media type calls him a living god (we're up to at least four that I can remember).
June 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
The issue here is verifiability. I realize this is only tenuously related to the article, but the basis of calculating those numbers have never been revealed for national security reasons, quite possibly legitimately. Therefore, it's impossible for anyone to verify the number.
On the other hand, the basis for claiming numbers of jobs saved by preventing a specific business from being liquidated has a very solid and verifiable basis. Your personal claim that you saved 10,500 jobs today, to me, is much less verifiable.
While, as JLP hints, the conclusion drawn are arguable, since those jobs might not have been lost if the employees were immediately re-employed elsewhere, or some other event might have intervened to save the original jobs, the specific claim that a particular job was saved has a much more solid basis. The more interesting question, and one addressed in the linked article, is how unemployment is measured. My personal impression is that THAT number has a much less solid basis than the one yielded by accounting for the effect of specific legislation and executive actions on determined businesses.