Counting the number of stimulus jobs is the wrong approach
The Associated Press reports on the difficulty in counting the number of "jobs created" by President Obama's stimulus package. The $787 billion plan aims to create and/or save 3.5 million jobs.
Various economists debate the methods associated with counting jobs created -- and the impossibility of counting how many jobs were "saved" by the stimulus package. But the problem is that looking at the number of jobs "saved" or the number of jobs "created" is the wrong question. As Jacob Sullum wrote in Reason back in December, job creation is simply not an end in itself:
