Stimulus jobs drop after New Jersey agencies stop estimating, start reporting real work
By JULIET FLETCHER
Press of Atlantic City
Several New Jersey agencies that handle federal stimulus dollars say they can no longer report projected job-creation numbers for any stimulus project. Instead, they are now reporting only actual jobs created — and a dip in job-creation numbers is already evident when compared with the figures Democratic federal and state administrations had been reporting.
The timing of the change coincides with Chris Christie’s arrival as the state’s Republican governor. And while departments say the shift started before Christie took office, experts say the changeover appears to be bad news for Democrats touting high job-creation numbers as they run for federal elections this fall.
As of March 31, New Jersey had benefited from the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with close to $10.2 billion in stimulus funding, federal stimulus data show. That money continues to be allocated for contracts, loans and grants, and used for everything from tax assistance for low-income families to construction and infrastructure projects.
A White House statement earlier this month claimed 89,000 jobs have been created in New Jersey since the program started in early 2009. But the federal government’s stimulus funding website, www.recovery.gov, reported that there were only 22,799 jobs paid for with stimulus funds in New Jersey between October and the end of December 2009, as reported by the municipalities, agencies and contractors that received funds. That same number dropped to 19,295 in the reporting period for January to March 2010, figures released Friday show.
Instead of estimating, recipients now calculate full-time jobs based on the actual employee hours paid for with recovery funds during each quarter. So if an employer defines a full-time schedule as 1,300 work hours in a quarter and uses stimulus money to pay for 1,300 hours of work from a single or multiple employees in that period, that recipient can report one stimulus job.
The latest numbers include only jobs actually created, and not projected, officials said.
The Christie administration has not published contradictory numbers or any job counts.
Political consequences
On the campaign trail, politicians — such as U.S. Rep. John Adler, D-3rd, who voted for the stimulus — make the case to voters about the need for a financial rescue package for the state and the country, and frequently cite the number of jobs created.
Adler, who voted in favor of the act in January 2009, touted its benefits almost immediately. Asked three months later whether he saw the stimulus taking effect, he said, “I think there are a lot of encouraging signs.”
But for job-creation statistics to work as an election talking point, campaign strategists reason, the number of jobs created must be large. That is no longer exactly the case with data originating from the state Department of Transportation, DOT spokesman Tim Greeley said.
“We stopped using projected numbers,” he said. “We report only actual jobs created under any given program.”
The change in policy, he said, was simple: “We now had actual data about some of these projects. We’ll use that rather than estimating.”
That means no more estimating the number of jobs on projects that have just been approved.
In one case that highlighted the way the state now counts vacancies and work hours created by stimulus-funded federal dollars, the Tuckahoe Road-NJ Transit Bridge project was launched using a $4.9 million grant in March. Although the DOT approved the scope of the work, Greeley said, the department will not say how many full-time jobs or equivalent work hours the project creates until the job is done.
Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak would not say Friday whether the governor was directly responsible for the change in reporting, and referred all questions to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Kevin Smith, a spokesman for that department, said each of the state agencies received money and guidance from their federal counterparts. “So I think this could have come down from a federal level,” he explained. At the same time that the DOT stopped using projections, Labor also changed its calculating practices, and excluded part-time seasonal jobs from its tally.
“That’s tough, of course,” Smith said, “because you put out a new number out there, that looks like you spent stimulus dollars and oh, you lost jobs.”
Nuanced numbers
Meanwhile, the real headaches are reserved for politicians on the stump who want to make sense of nuanced numbers for voters at rallies and in diners, said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
“Mostly, people don’t remember numbers. They listen to a speech hoping to get a feel for that candidate,” he said. So while an impressive job-creation number can stick in people’s minds, he said, “That only works if they can concretely think of ways the stimulus has helped them.”
Dworkin said supporters of the stimulus may have to decide whether to “own” the issue, one closely associated with President Barack Obama, who faces the same challenge to show results.
Potential Republican opponents of Adler this fall have already leaped on the assumption that the fewer jobs the stimulus has clearly created, the more the federal program becomes a liability for its supporters.
On March 18, Jon Runyan, one of two Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to challenge Adler, launched his campaign in Mount Laurel Township, Burlington County, criticizing Adler for supporting a stimulus that he said had failed to help the state’s unemployed.
Runyan said that day that Adler “voted for the one trillion stimulus plan that cost us jobs, didn’t create jobs.”
The GOP response
In late 2008, the National Republican Congressional Committee reportedly focused a series of automated calls against Adler’s freshman bid, taking him to task on his support of the stimulus plan. The bill passed the House in February of that year without a single Republican vote.
But Adler supporters point to Runyan’s stated support for the $700 billion bank bailout, something Adler has said should be repaid.
A face-off between Adler and Runyan may well include a fight over stimulus support, said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University.
“Stimulus spending is such an ideological issue that it will play out in competitive districts, like the 3rd, because the district is so evenly divided politically,” she said.
“The difficulty for Democrats is that in some voters’ minds, stimulus job creation equals government interference in the economy and the stereotypical ‘big government spending’ commonly railed about.
“But the difficulty for Republicans is that it is hard to argue against taking stimulus dollars when people desperately need jobs, and when failing to do so would be subsidizing the economies of other states that do take the federal monies.”
“Democratic candidates will probably be assisted by the Obama administration in creating job projections,” she added.
With more jobs leading to increased demand for goods and services, including homes, more investment dollars available, higher consumer confidence, she said, “If people feel like these things are happening, the projections are irrelevant.”
“This year, politics will be about that classic political question: Are you better off today than you were — in this case, two years ago?”
