Education Week just issued their Quality Counts 2011 report. Expect a proper analysis of the report and what it means for Ohio and K-12 education in tomorrow's Ohio Education Gadfly. But one thing jumped out at me in the fine print. In a section of the report headed ???An Engine of Job Recovery??? it read, ???Across all federal agencies, an average of 2.7 jobs have been created for every $1 million in stimulus spending.??? (Page 7 of National Highlights in 2011, if you want to check it out for yourself.)
This factoid caused me to do a double-take. Is it possible that each job created by the federal stimulus actually cost taxpayers $370,370.37? If this is indeed the case then it seems that the taxpayers of America were taken to the cleaners. Consider, for example, that the average teacher in Ohio in 2009 made about $56,000, or according to the U.S. Census the real median earnings of men who worked full time in 2007 was $45,113. So, even with full benefits and spreading the spending across two full years one would think a job could be saved for about half of $370,000.
Maybe a Flypaper reader can provide some insights and answers, but surely the stimulus got a better return on investment than 2.7 jobs for every million spent? Is this a misprint?
- Terry Ryan
