As President Obama jets and buses around the country, urging Congress to pass his jobs bill, an unusual bit of information jumped out of last month’s national employment report: The president’s bill would create more than twice as many local education jobs as the nation’s school districts have lost over the past year.
That’s right. The chart below, which is part of the report (PDF download) issued by Education Secretary Arne Duncan Oct. 4, shows that the American Jobs Act would create 392,400 jobs in local education.
There’s a problem here. According to the September employment report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, local education jobs nationwide (not seasonally adjusted) have fallen by only 150,100 from September 2010 to September 2011, from 7,736,500 last year to 7,586,400 this year. A screenshot from the BLS report follows:
Setting aside the fact that the American Jobs Act would fund teacher jobs for only one year. And even if Congress passed the bill today and sent it to the president for his immediate signature, school districts wouldn’t be able to use the money until the summer of 2012. The Obama jobs plan would hire nearly 250,000 more local educators than school districts across the country have lost.
It seems to me the people in the White House could stand a few courses in remedial math.
