When the numbers lie

Katie Couric, you will always hold a special place in our hearts.

Couric investigated the Obama administration’s previous report regarding how many jobs the February stimulus created or saved. In an Oct. 29 interview with CBS correspondent Chip Reid, the two attacked White House numbers on the amount of jobs the $787 billion stimulus actually created.

For example, Reid reported that at a small Georgia college, $200,000 paid for a modular classroom and trucks for student drivers. The college saw fit to report this as generating 280 jobs. That would be an annual salary of approximately $714 per newly-created job. It’s obvious the initial stimulus report has hundreds of errors, and it’s wonderful fuel for critics of the stimulus plan. Before you go for your pitch- forks, take a moment to breathe.

While it is important for journalists like Couric to call into question the shaky numbers in the report, we should keep in mind that these numbers are excruciatingly difficult and perhaps even impossible to gauge with complete accuracy.

Republican Representative John Boehner said it best: “There is no factual way of determining how many jobs were saved or created.”

There will be a few examples of jobs being directly created by stimulus money, but the nature of such a plan aims to create a domino effect harder to follow than a finite math permutation problem.

Anyone benefiting from the stimulus has incentive to put a positive spin on job numbers. If the government gave IU money for trucks, we wouldn’t want to tell them they’re sit- ting in a garage unused somewhere under Ballantine Hall.

Numbers like these are difficult to crunch, and the multifaceted causation of job creation can and will be easily manipulated by people who stand to benefit from the numbers, whether they prove the stimulus worked or support just the opposite.

The Obama administration released a new report detailing job cre- ation on Friday that credited the stimulus with the creation or salvation of 640,000 jobs. Republicans critics said that each new job cost $248,000 to create. Each side has its own numbers.

But a successful stimulus should be determined based on the state of the economy, not a report that’s go- ing to be untrustworthy no matter who writes it.

It’s very likely that the $787 billion stimulus somewhat helped spark the 3.5 percent growth the economy saw in the third quarter. Journalists like Couric, however, shouldn’t stop questioning these reports so that Americans can remember that figures don’t lie, but liars figure.