Latest Stimulus Report Fuels Jobs Pressure

JANUARY 31, 2010, 2:43 P.M. ET
Latest Stimulus Report Fuels Jobs Pressure

By LOUISE RADNOFSKY
WASHINGTON — Recipients of economic-stimulus money said they had used the funds to pay 599,108 workers in the last quarter of 2009, fewer than the number of jobs they had reported to have created or saved in the first seven months after the plan was enacted.
The recipients' reports, published on the official government Web site recovery.gov late Saturday night, are likely to fuel further controversy over the impact of the $787 billion package, as Democrats seek to craft new jobs-creation proposals to address the country's continued, high jobless rate.
Many opinion polls suggest that most voters do not believe the current stimulus program, which was passed last February, is working.
Stimulus recipients previously reported that they had directly "created or saved" 640,329 jobs by September 30, 2009, but their filings were widely criticized after it emerged that some people had reported saving jobs when they had actually spent the money on pay raises or paying employees who were not in danger of being laid off.
In December, the White House Office of Management and Budget changed its guidance, telling recipients they should start counting every worker whose salary was funded with stimulus money, rather than guessing whether the jobs would have existed in the absence of the federal plan. Opponents of the program accused the administration of "moving the goal posts" to make the plan appear more successful.
Liberal think tanks such as the Economic Policy Institute said ahead of Saturday's release that the jobs numbers didn't take into account the full economic impact of the stimulus package, such as jobs indirectly created as a result of people being hired to work on stimulus projects, or of people receiving food stamps or other aid funded by the stimulus program.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that the plan has kept between 1.5 million and two million jobs in the economy through the end of 2009. In his State of the Union address to Congress last week, President Barack Obama said that "because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed." A White House spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Description:

This article articulates alot about how the government has helped employee 640,329 people who were laid off. The stimulus package is a government program funded into finding jobs. Some may ask. What does this article have anything to do with economics? I would respond by saying "Without people and there jobs the there would be no regulations or circulations with money." Hence money plays a key role in economics. Economics is the study of how people try to satisfy seemingly unlimited and competing wants through the careful use of relatively scarce resources. (p.6) From textbook. Recipient-a person or thing that receives. (dictionary.com) Stimulus-something that incites to action or exertion. (dictionary.com) Budget-all annual procedure to decide how much public spending should be in the year ahead and what mix of taxation charging for services and borrowing should fiance it. (http://www.economist.com/research/economics/) Laid off-to dismiss, temporarily because of slack in business. (dictionary.com)

Analysis:

The news of our economic crisis is not new news. People are losing their jobs within minutes of the day. The unemployment rate in the United States from 2007-2008 was 4.6-5.8, which is increasingly a large amount of people. There are so many reasons why we are somewhat still in an economic rut. Money has become scarce, stocks were losing value and jobs were being lost. On the way to recovery we, as the United States have worked together to create many program and in this particular article a governmental program that will help rebuild the economy in the United States.

Explanation:

The economy is a circulation of standards that is either met or not. In recent records the economy has been in some turmoil because of the neglect in many areas in production and overall choices people make. The evaluation is endless as were looking into the real economic down fall that caused people to lose their jobs.

Prediction:

I completely feel that there is hope for the economy and the people. I really do believe in multinational conversion in our nations. We are all neighbors and should work together to make an even great stability for our well-being.