Jobs, Jobs, Jobs???

The Associated Press: SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs: "PORTLAND, Ore. — How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.

But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime."

This is even worse than Obama's dissembling via the words "new jobs." As Dennis Prager often points out, government can always create "new jobs" by fiat. But they can't create net additional new jobs unless the actions of the government are neutral or stimulative to the creation of jobs elsewhere in the economy.

This is well illustrated by Spain's experience with "green job" creation, commented on last month in this blog. In Spain, the "creation" of each new green job is calculated to have come at the cost of 2.2 other jobs.