Is the federal stimulus creating jobs? Saving jobs? Is there any way to know--or get a politically unbiased answer? Since February, when the administration suggested the $787 billion stimulus could create or save 3.5 million jobs, the economy reportedly has lost 1.6 million jobs. This week President Obama said the stimulus has saved 150,000 jobs, and, well, would you settle for 600,000 new ones by the end of summer? Bring on the skeptics! "Today I saved 150,000 jobs," barks Big Dog's Weblog. "There are now 150,000 people who will continue to work because of me. No one can prove I did not, because there is no way to measure a 'saved' job." "Here's an important note to my friends in the news media," writes Tony Fratto at the CNBC Guest Blog. "The White House has absolutely no earthly clue how many job losses have been prevented because of the stimulus bill. None."

Even accepting the 150,000 figure, scoffs Hot Air: that means the stimulus has "'created or saved not quite one-tenth the total number of jobs lost. That's worth upwards of a trillion dollars, isn't it?" MainStreet contends that, based on job listings at recovery.gov, the stimulus has created only 88 government jobs--and concludes: "That seems awfully low to us." Meanwhile, Real Time Economics reports that "Republicans were lining up some misleading attacks on the Obama administration's claims that the stimulus will save or create 3.5 million jobs."

The evenhanded Political Punch says the new promise of 600,000 jobs comes "at a time when other numerical projections and claims have been questioned." "Is the stimulus stimulating jobs? We may never know for sure," says watchdog group ProPublica's Eye on the Stimulus. Counting is "more complicated than it seems. Surely you count the employees of the construction contractor hired to renovate the government building, for example, but do you count the subcontractors hired by the contractor? What about workers at the paint factory who would have been laid off without business from the construction project? What about workers at the nearby grocery store..." The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent of the total kitty and that's why it will accelerate summer funding for public works projects, summer youth programs, law enforcement, and other stuff to "provide a ray of hope in a thus far dismal job market," says The Common Progressive. A small ray. Havard prof Jeff Frankel blogs that labor market may still go down before it goes up, citing data showing total hours worked in the USA falling. "If firms were really gearing up to start hiring workers once again, why would they now be cutting back as strongly as ever on the hours that they ask their existing employees to work?  The labor market does not quite yet suggest that the economy has hit bottom."