`US stimulus package created 640,000 jobs'

US President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package has created or saved more than 640,000 jobs since it was enacted earlier this year, the White House said Friday.
 
The numbers indicated the US was on track to create 3.5 million new jobs by next year through government spending on infrastructure projects, education, health care and green technology, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

But the new jobs have yet to dampen the high unemployment rate, which still stands at 9.8 per cent - the highest in more than 25 years. The White House numbers were based on stimulus spending through September.

That has left the White House having to increasingly defend the massive stimulus measure. The package was passed in February and cost taxpayers $787 billion.

The job figures followed an announcement by the commerce department on Thursday that the economy grew a surprising 3.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2009 (ended 30 September), likely showing an end to the worst recession in the US in decades.

The annualised gross domestic product (GDP) rate was higher than the 3.2 per cent that economists predicted for the summer months.
However, Christina Romer, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, told Congress on 22 October that most of the economic growth from President Obama's stimulus package has occurred already.

On 28 February, the council had predicted that with passage of the $787 billion stimulus package, the unemployment rate would only reach 8.1 per cent this year. With current unemployment at 9.8 per cent and rising, the president's promises of millions of jobs being created or saved don't really seem to have panned out.