'Solidly On Track' To Save Or Create 3.5M Jobs By End Of 2010, White House Says

In a document just posted at whitehouse.gov, the Obama administration makes the case that not only has the $787 billion economic stimulus plan already saved or created more than 1 million jobs, but it also has put the economy on track to meet the president's pledge to save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

From that White House report:

Today's release by the independent Recovery, Accountability, and Transparency Board shows that recipients of a subset of Recovery Act funds have reported creating or saving 640,329 jobs so far. Since this reporting is based on only a portion of the Act's funds -- about $160 billion, which represents less than half of the money put to work so far -- it represents a subset of the jobs created or saved. This number also leaves out indirect jobs: employment created as a result of ARRA funds money spent by direct recipients. ...

Since, as noted above, the recipient reporting represents less than half of the obligations plus tax cuts so far, we can get a rough sense of its comparability to the more comprehensive estimates above by doubling the recipient-reported job creation of 640,329, yielding a jobs number -- almost 1.3 million. ...

Given that more than half of Recovery Act funds have yet to be obligated, the fact that many funded projects have a lot more hiring to do, and the fact that these reports account for around 640,000 jobs through the end of September despite all the omissions just noted, we are solidly on track to meet our goal of 3.5 million jobs saved or created by the end of next year.

Earlier, Vice President Joe Biden said the administration isn't satisfied, however. "We still got a long way to go, folks," the vice president said:

The details on where the jobs have been created are supposed to posted soon at Recovery.gov.

When the day started, the White House was signaling it would report that 1 million jobs had been saved or created so far by the stimulus plan.