Stimulus review finds jobs are overstated by the thousands

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

In the Tampa Bay area, the St. Petersburg Times found state officials inflated the number of jobs supported by a $157 million project to improve U.S. 19 over four years. The stimulus gives $44 million toward the work. After touting 5,800 jobs would benefit, state officials reduced it to 4,400 in September.

But even that estimate uses a federal formula that allows the same job to be counted multiple times for each year at work. Economists said the actual benefit could be 1,100 jobs.

Now an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report has found that 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.

The errors could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is released. It is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

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 had helped pay for more than 30,000 jobs. The administration said the number was evidence that the stimulus program had exceeded early expectations toward reaching the president's promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010.

The White House says it is aware there are problems. Ed DeSeve, an Obama adviser helping to oversee the stimulus program, said agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said.

There's no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report.

Administration officials say they are trying to head off problems before the new figures are released Friday.