Jobs impact of state's stimulus spending unknown
Colorado has distributed more than $1.2 billion of the $5.7 billion it expects to receive in federal stimulus money, Gov. Bill Ritter’s office said Tuesday. But the number-crunchers are struggling to quantify the $787 billion bill’s success in achieving its main goal: creating and retaining jobs.
In a briefing Tuesday, Myung Kim, who is tracking the myriad impacts of Colorado’s portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, said 5,291 full-time equivalent positions — half of them in higher education — were created or retained in the state through stimulus grants and contracts. But she said the number of people actually hired or held was greater, saying agencies involved with hiring had reported 10,322 full-time, part-time or temp jobs created or retained.
“The jobs number is actually larger than this, but it is one that we cannot capture at this point,” Kim said. “That 10,322 is still an underrepresentation.”
She also said no data was available comparing new hires to jobs retained.
Asked why job-creation statistics weren’t more readily available, she replied, “The recovery act is the most complicated piece of legislation passed in decades, and it has been very challenging for us to collect this information.”
A county-by-county breakdown of stimulus hiring was promised on Friday, when a more comprehensive data release is scheduled by the federal government.
Unlike the hiring picture, the stimulus bill’s money trail is easier to follow, and includes totals for each of Colorado’s 64 counties. Ritter’s office says El Paso County has received $310 million from ARRA, distributed among a wide range of government agencies and contractors providing everything from law enforcement to road work to job training to water projects to small business loans and educational grants. (For highlights, see box)
The governor’s office said hundreds of thousands of Coloradans had seen a boost in their Social Security, food stamp or unemployment benefits.
Kim said that new money was arriving daily, and that the state was nowhere close to seeing the full impact of the stimulus bill.
“Without this money we would be in a much worse place,” she said. “The major benefits are still to come.”
—
Contact the writer at 476-1654
