NPR may have misled readers with a report on the jobs created by the stimulus. The report followed a White House report documenting the jobs created through the government contracts in the stimulus. While the report mentioned that this spending is just a small portion of the stimulus, it gave credence to Republican claims that the stimulus has had relatively little effect on employment. While these are jobs that can easily documented, the vast majority of the jobs created by the stimulus came as a result of increased unemployment benefits (including subsidies for health insurance), budget aid for state and local governments, and the tax cuts in the plan. There is no way to document the individual jobs created or saved through these channels, but it would be in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000.
--Dean Baker
