Saved or Created, Inc claims a million jobs now

The last we heard from Saved or Created, Inc, three months ago, they claimed to have rescued 150,000 jobs with their Porkulus spending.  At that time, unemployment had hit 9.4% and the number of unemployed was 14.5 million.  Three months later, unemployment has risen to 9.7% and we now have 14.9 million unemployed, an increase of 417,000.  Did the White House explain these job losses?  Not exactly:

White House economists said Thursday the Obama administration’s recovery efforts have saved or created more than one million jobs so far.

President Barack Obama has promised that his $787 billion stimulus plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. But the economy has fared worse than the White House predicted when it pitched the jobs plan and officials have sought to beat back criticism that the results did not justify the huge combination of tax cuts, state aide and government spending.

In its first report to Congress on the stimulus, the White House Council on Economic Advisers said the economy would have been far worse without the stimulus. The report was scheduled to be released Thursday afternoon. An official who reviewed it summarized its findings on condition of anonymity because it had not been released.

The report attributes the million job figure to the stimulus and other policy actions but says the driving force behind the job creation is the stimulus.

Bear in mind that increase in unemployment.  Over four hundred thousand people lost their jobs while the White House claims it “saved or created” 850,000 more jobs since its last report.

So where are those 850,000 extra jobs?  Where did they get “saved or created”?  Which highway jobs led to other jobs, and who filled them or kept them?  Don’t expect to get any answers to those questions.  Congress has already become skeptical of Obama’s economic advisers and their unsupportable claims, and for good reasons.  When the man in charge of the program can’t provide an explanation at all, let alone one that makes sense, the White House tends to lose all credibility on the topic.

Whatever credibility they retain with anyone outside of their core of true believers will dissipate quickly when this number hits the critical mass of media attention.  No one will buy that a summer of massive job losses somehow saw 850,000 jobs “saved or created” by Porkulus, especially since the flow of Porkulus money actually slowed during the summer.  If anyone ever needed proof of the Obama administration’s fantasy world, this provides it nicely.

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