AP review finds problems with job creation numbers

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AP review finds problems with job creation numbers

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is promising that figures coming out tomorrow on the progress of the president's economic recovery plan will be more accurate than the previous ones.

An Associated Press review found that the government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program overstated the number of jobs saved by thousands.

The AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

Obama's stimulus overseer says the administration has been working for weeks to correct mistakes in early counts that identified more than 30,000 jobs paid for with stimulus money. He says the new stimulus report tomorrow should reflect "a pretty good degree of accuracy."

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