White House releases stimulus jobs data

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Federal contracts relying on the 2009 recovery act created or saved 30,383 jobs, a preliminary figure, the U.S. government said.

The Obama administration has said the $787 billion stimulus measure would create or save 3.5 million jobs over two years. Release of the figure -- an actual figure, rather than an estimate -- risked a political whiplash if taken out of context as the administration fulfilled its pledge to make stimulus data transparent, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The entire stimulus bill involves tax breaks, allocations to state governments and federal spending on infrastructure projects. Job data from states will not be published until the end of October, the Times said.

Vice President Joseph Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein, said in a statement that "it is too soon to draw any global conclusions from this partial and preliminary data."

"All signs -- from private estimates to this fragmentary data -- point to the conclusion that the recovery act did indeed create or save about 1 million jobs in its first seven months, a much needed lift in a very difficult period for our economy," he said.