President Obama's announcement Thursday of a December jobs summit aimed at synching job growth with massive government spending has provoked cynicism among critics who believe the president is more interested in burnishing his reputation than tackling rising unemployment.
"I think the purpose of the summit is basically just public relations, is to try and convince people that the administration is doing a good job," Harvard economist Jeff Miron said.
Obama's announcement came with unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2 percent despite the president's repeated touting of all the administration's efforts to create jobs.
"We'll gather CEOs and small-business owners, economists and financial experts, as well as representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again," he said Thursday.
Obama is facing reports from around the country that claims of jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus are, as the Boston Globe put it, "wildly exaggerated."
The Globe, for example, found that the city of Waltham reported a $630,000 solar panel installed in city hall created 10 jobs. The problem is the work hasn't even started yet.
"There are a lot of ways it can get exaggerated," Miron said. "One is that nobody has a really compelling incentive to get these numbers exactly right. Indeed, a lot of people I think feel that it's their job to say that the stimulus is working and so there is some tendency to lean in a direction of saying that lots of jobs have been saved or created.
In Wisconsin, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that claims that the stimulus created 10,000 jobs in Wisconsin were "rife with errors."
In one case of money for sewer repairs, five new jobs were listed as 50 and then double counted. So five turned into 100.
"At this point, it's very difficult to call it accurate," said Michael Balsam, the chief solutions officer of Onvia. "There are cases where there are millions and millions of dollars being spent with no jobs reported against it."
A Wisconsin migrant group said that $18,000 grant saved 113 jobs, about $160 per job.
Head Start programs in several states claimed hundreds of jobs were created with stimulus money, but the money went for pay raises, not creating new jobs.
Fox News' Jim Angle contributed to this report.
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