Economic Stimulus Has Created 650,000 Jobs
The Obama Administration announced today that the economic stimulus package has created or saved close to 640,329 jobs to date. Over 62% of these jobs — the results of direct stimulus spending — are in the education and construction sectors.
So this new data is great news for teachers and laborers, but where does it leave the rest of us? The unemployment rate this year is still expected to reach 10%. Many organizations are continuing to face massive cutbacks. Small business owners are being forced to deal with reduced consumption. More and more jobs are going freelance to avoid costly benefits packages.
Vice President Joe Biden thinks the economy is "moving in the right direction … on the road to recovery." House Republican Leader John Boehner is less enthusiastic, claiming the stimulus "isn't working, and no amount of phony statistics can change that."
It remains to be seen whether or not the stimulus package will succeed in providing the promised 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. I would hope for the sake of the American workforce that Vice President Biden is correct and we are indeed on the right course. We should remain optimistic, but we need to remember that it's going to take a lot more work to get our economy back to full strength again.
[Source: The Wall Street Journal]
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