Jobs aided by stimulus overstated

WASHINGTON —  A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Obama’s economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.

A child-care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.

Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.

The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president’s $787-billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program’s first progress report.

The errors could be magnified Friday with the release of data expected to show the creation or preservation of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The White House seized on an initial report from a government oversight board weeks ago that claimed federal contracts awarded to businesses under the recovery plan already had helped pay for more than 30,000 jobs. The administration said the number showed the stimulus program had exceeded expectations toward reaching the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

But the 30,000 figure is overstated, at the very least, by nearly 5,000, based on AP’s limited review of some of the contracts -- because some federal agencies and recipients of the money provided incorrect job counts. The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.

There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers, and the White House said agencies had been working to correct mistakes and would fix any others found.