Garett Jones & Daniel Rothschild — George Mason economists — surveyed employers to determine the impacts of Obama’s trillion dollar Stimulus.
Their report “Did Stimulus Dollars Hire the Unemployed?” presents several interesting conclusions.
Most noteworthy:
Just 42.1 percent of the workers hired at Stimulus-receiving organizations, were unemployed at the time they were hired.
More were hired directly from other organizations (47.3 percent)
A handful of hires came from school (6.5%) or from outside the labor force (4.1%)
Thus, there was an almost even split between “job creating” and “job switching.”
Bottom line: Hiring isn’t the same as net job creation.
Technical note: To be fair, there are 2nd and 3rd order effectc. That is, firms that get poached may need to hire replacement workers — who may be drawn from the unemployment roles. So, the Stimulus may have reduced unemployment more than the survey indicates.
The Homa Files 
September 7, 2011 at 9:51 am |
Is it fair to only look at organizations that directly received stimulus money? If that is the case, should tax cuts be judged by the direct hiring done by its beneficiaries?