796 Stimulus Jobs | New Hampshire Public Radio

796 Stimulus Jobs | New Hampshire Public Radio: "When President Obama signed the federal stimulus package into law, officials said it would bring 16 thousand jobs to New Hampshire. To get to that number, you have to start somewhere and today, the state issued its first formal tally of jobs paid for with stimulus dollars. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jon Greenberg has our report.

Counting jobs is harder than you might think. If a person is hired for three months, is that a job? If someone else works longer but only part time, when do you call that a job? The answer from Washington is you add up all the hours worked during a certain period. Then you divide by however many hours you consider to be full time.

For New Hampshire, the result is 796.2. That’s how many jobs measured in full time equivalents were paid for with stimulus dollars as of the end of June. Just about all of them, 700, are government workers who otherwise would have been laid off. Bud Fitch, Director of the office of economic stimulus, presented the figures to the governor and executive council. If anyone was expecting a robust jobs report, Fitch was blunt but he highlighted the limitations of this first assessment."