So how many jobs were "created or saved"?

Of course, all this ignores the jobs that were lost by the government taking money that would have been spent elsewhere.

Recipients of economic-stimulus money said they had used the funds to pay 599,108 workers in the last quarter of 2009, fewer than the number of jobs they had reported to have created or saved in the first seven months after the plan was enacted. This seems a lot short of the 1.5 to 2 million promised.

The recipients' reports, published on the official government Web site recovery.gov late Saturday night, are likely to fuel further controversy over the impact of the $787 billion package, as Democrats seek to craft new jobs-creation proposals to address the country's continued, high jobless rate.

Many opinion polls suggest that most voters do not believe the current stimulus program, which was passed last February, is working.

Stimulus recipients previously reported that they had directly "created or saved" 640,329 jobs by September 30, 2009, but their filings were widely criticized after it emerged that some people had reported saving jobs when they had actually spent the money on pay raises or paying employees who were not in danger of being laid off.

In December, the White House Office of Management and Budget changed its guidance, telling recipients they should start counting every worker whose salary was funded with stimulus money, rather than guessing whether the jobs would have existed in the absence of the federal plan. Opponents of the program accused the administration of "moving the goal posts" to make the plan appear more successful.

Liberal think tanks such as the Economic Policy Institute said ahead of Saturday's release that the jobs numbers didn't take into account the full economic impact of the stimulus package, such as jobs indirectly created as a result of people being hired to work on stimulus projects, or of people receiving food stamps or other aid funded by the stimulus program.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that the plan has kept between 1.5 million and two million jobs in the economy through the end of 2009. . . .

The administration is planning on spending another $100 billion on more "jobs."