Two economists — Timothy Conley (Western Ontario University) and Bill Dupor (Ohio State University) – just completed a rigorous analysis of Obama’s Trillion-Dollar-Stimulus programs.
Their conclusions:
- “We found, surprisingly, either negligible or negative effects of the Act on total employment.
- Specifically, we estimate the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs.
- State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment.
- The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.”
Seems a bit at odds with Obama’s 3 million jobs saved or created.
Hmmm.
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The Homa Files 
May 18, 2011 at 1:18 pm |
How does purely spending vast amounts of money destroy private sector jobs?
For example, highway construction jobs for road improvements, construction of a new science center, etc. funded by the ARRA piggy bank. Those job gains are clearly not sustainable over the long term, but I don’t see how there could be private sector “job desctrution” from spending money on these somewhat dubious public improvement projects.