Most Georgia stimulus jobs in government and schools

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nearly three quarters of the jobs Georgia officials say were created or saved through federal stimulus spending in the state are in state or local governments or public school systems, according to a state estimate.

In all, 17,067 jobs were created or saved for teachers, college professors, police officers and other positions. The rest -- 6,812 -- are in the private sector.

Thursday, the state disclosed that 18 of its agencies have spent $702 million of the $3.2 billion allocated to them so far, creating or saving 23,879 jobs. The figures break down to $23,380 spent per job across the state.

Under the bill that created the $787 billion stimulus program in February, states, counties and school systems that receive the taxpayer money are required to report quarterly to the federal government on how they are spending it and how many jobs have been created or retained. Georgia filed its first reports Oct. 10.

Georgia’s figures do not include statistics from local governments, nonprofits and businesses. The federal government is expected to release statistics for all the states by the end of this month.

Some more details from Georgia:

Area of Employment/Stimulus Dollars Spent/Jobs Created or Saved

*Education/$503.3 million/13,802

**Public Safety/$100.8 million/3,340

Health/$15.3 million/4

Employment/$24.9 million/6,342

Transportation/$33.5 million/244

Energy and Environment/$23.3 million/77

Housing and Community Development/$258,262/70

Totals: $702 million/23,879

*Includes $491.8 million spent in so-called “fiscal stabilization” stimulus funds for public schools, technical colleges and universities.

**Includes $100.7 million spent in fiscal stabilization stimulus funds for the state’s departments of corrections, juvenile justice, revenue and public safety and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

How they are counting the jobs

The federal government has told the state to count "full-time equivalents" by calculating the cumulative number of hours worked in jobs created or retained through stimulus projects and then divide that number by the hours in a full-time schedule.

Georgia officials say that method does not work for counting jobs created or saved through spending fiscal stabilization funds, which are designed to shore up state and local government budgets amid the recession. So the state is taking the total amount of stimulus funds allocated to a local school district, for example, and dividing that by the district's average salary.

Economists agree those are both sound formulas for counting jobs.

“We are counting jobs and we are very confident in that count, using their formula,” Sid Johnson, Gov. Sonny Perdue's director of stimulus accountability, said about the federal government’s guidance. “Yes, there are plenty of questions about [the jobs]: ‘Are they sustainable? What kind of jobs are they?’”

Projected job growth and unemployment

3.6 million – the number of jobs the White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted will be created or saved through the stimulus program nationwide

106,000 – the number of jobs the council predicted will be created or saved in Georgia over the next two years

1 million – the number of jobs the council estimates have been created or saved through the stimulus spending so far

9.8 percent – the nation’s unemployment rate as of September, which is up from 8.1 percent in February when President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

10.1 percent – Georgia’s unemployment rate as of September, which is up from 9.2 percent in February

What the experts are saying

“For the money that has been spent, the signs are fine. But that is a very small impact for Georgia. The money should be spent much more rapidly. If we are going to have an impact, we need a jolt. We don’t need it dribbled out bit by bit.”

Thomas D. Boston, professor of economics at Georgia Tech and CEO of Atlanta-based EuQuant, an economic consulting firm

“Both the federal government and Georgia have done the right thing… We need to be creating jobs and clearly this stimulus is creating jobs.”

Jeffrey Rosensweig, an economist at Emory University

“You are actually getting a very good employment impact per dollar out of this package, higher than I actually would have expected. Frankly, I suspect the reason for that is because so many of the jobs are in the public sector where the pay levels are not quite as high.”

Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia