AP Wins the "Are Kidding Me Award" as it Touts Jobs Gained by the Stimulus

Here's the AP's headline: "STIMULUS WATCH: Construction drives up new jobs"

Yeah, that's right. While the graphic above might suggest a different story, this AP article would have you believe that jobs are being gained by the "stimulus" package. How many? How about 30,000?

"Businesses reported creating or saving more than 30,000 jobs in the first months of President Barack Obama's stimulus program, according to initial data released Thursday by a government oversight board. Military construction led the way, and states in the South and Southwest saw the biggest boost.

"The new job numbers — in line with expectations for such an early accounting — offer the first hard data on effects of the $787 billion stimulus program."The figures are based on jobs linked to less than $16 billion in federal contracts and represent just a sliver of the total stimulus package. But they also represent a milestone of sorts for an administration that promised unprecedented real-time data on whether the program was working."

Give me a break... Unemployment will hit double digits anytime now, and we're expected to believe that this political payoff is creating jobs. $16 billion dollars for 30,000 jobs? At that rate how much is going to cost to put even 1% of Americans back to work? All with no hope of profit or any form of monetary return?

Check out this graphic of jobs losses and gains over the past six years (h/t Instapundit). Run the pointer to June 2009 and tell me that the stimulus is working.

NEWSFLASH: The unemployment rate is higher than the White House said it would be without the stimulus package. I'm afraid those 30,000 jobs just aren't tipping the balance.

UPDATE: Conn Carroll at The Foundry has this to say:

"The Obama administration released the first hard numbers on how many jobs their $787 billion stimulus package has created or saved on Recovery.gov today. The number: 30,383 jobs from roughly $16 billion worth of stimulus contracts awarded directly by federal agencies.

"Crunching the numbers, that comes to $533,000 per job 'saved or created.' To put those 30,383 jobs in perspective, consider that the U.S. economy lost 263,000 net jobs just last month and has lost 3.6 million net jobs since President Barack Obama was sworn into office.

"But the administration also claims that federal contractor spending is just one portion of the overall stimulus “buckshot.” Last month at the Brookings Institute, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that White House computer models showed their stimulus plan had already saved between 500,000 and 750,000. And just how accurate are these White House economic models? Well, when the White House was pitching its plan to the American people, White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein wrote a report claiming the stimulus would keep unemployment under a peak of 8%. And what have actual Bureau of Labor and Statistics shown? A a 26-year record high of 9.8% unemployment rate."

So, $533,000 per job and 3.6 million jobs lost since Obama took over. So how much would that cost to employ all those people to get back to even Bush's level of unemployment?