"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Just How Much Did That "Stimulus Job" Cost?

I had been hearing from different sources how much the so-called stimulus jobs were costing you and I - you know, the poor saps that pay the bills. Having checked the multi-million dollar government site recently to satisfy my curiosity as to what $8 million has bought us, I decided it was a good opportunity to put it to use for my own research. Here, according to the 'recovery.gov' site, is the list of the top ten “stimulus” spending projects by dollar amount and the amount each of those jobs created has cost us.



1) Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC (SC) – $1,407,839,884 awarded – $225,872,246 invoiced/received – 800 jobs created – $282,340 per job
2) CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company (WA) – $1,359,715,229 – $142,167,945 invoiced – 621 jobs – $228,934 per job
3) CH2M WG Idaho LLC (ID) – $437,675,000 – $66,401,236 invoiced – 496 jobs – $133,873 per job
4) UT-Battelle, LLC (TN) – $338,697,231 – $12,909,144 invoiced – 41 jobs – $314,857 per job
5) SAIC-Frederick, Inc. (MD) – $302,521,207 – project not commenced
6) Washington River Protection Solutions LLC (WA) – $299,728,838 – 200 jobs – $28,092,695 invoiced – $140,463 per job
7) Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Y-12, LLC (TN) – $270,299,243 – 129 jobs – $18,107,076 invoiced – $140,364 per job
8) Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC (NY) – $257,613,800 – 25 jobs – $29,528,879 invoiced – $1,181,155 per job
9) Washington Closure Hanford, LLC (WA) – $253,614,000 – 36 jobs – $16,474,802 invoiced – $457,633 per job
10) Los Alamos National Security, LLC (NM) – $230,835,000 – 66 jobs – $7,646,242 invoiced – $115,852 per job


That would be a total of $5.16 billion committed and $547 million spent, for a total of 2,414 jobs. Now, I do not know how many, if any, of those jobs are real and how many are fictional but my math tells me that each one of those jobs cost us roughly $226,700 (I could have said $2.1 million per job based on the full committment but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the recipients will be creating more jobs, proportional to the balance of the funds they will be recieving). Another point to ponder is the types of jobs created. I looked in to each recipient and discovered that there are blue collar as well as engineering type jobs that are being reported as being 'created or saved'. Some of these jobs exceed a million dollars (see number 8 above) in cost. That is some salary for a job that will go away when the funding is not renewed.

But don’t worry. These idiots will totally make your health care more efficient as they claim.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your math is not wrong. However, I must point out that the results of your exercise are misleading.
For instance, consider the contract in your list. A $1,4m contract is hardly worth noting when those jobs are of a technical nature. Unless, of course, you would be of the opinion that decommissioning an old nuclear reactor is something that should cost a lot less.

We should be asking “are those expenses necessary?” and “should the government foot the bill for them?” These expenses seem like a drop in the bucket when compared against contracts awarded to BA during the last 2 previous administrations and contracts awarded to Blackwater during the last administration.

The Patriot said...

The end result is that tax payers paid through the nose for something they should not have. I am confident that every administration pisses money away in bloated government contracts - it is not just a Democrat or Republican thing. What gets me is that this stimulus is being fed to the public as a jobs program, which it obviously is not considering how much we are spending for so few jobs (many of which, according to ABC and other sources do not even exist or in some cases simply pay raises being counted as jobs created/saved)

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