Where will those 600,000 new jobs be created?
AMARILLO, TEXAS -- President Obama said on Monday that he would accelerate spending billions of dollars in stimulus funds and create or save, 600,000 jobs this summer.
One local economist says that the word choice the president used, makes a huge difference.
"There's a big distinction between creating 600,000 jobs, and saving 600,000 jobs," Amarillo Economist Karr Ingham said, "because one of those is impossible to measure. So we won't have any idea how many jobs were saved as a result of spending the economic stimulus recovery package."
The president's announcement came just three days after unemployment rose to its highest level in almost 26 years.
Ingham also said that 600,000 is only about 10 percent of the total amount of jobs that have been lost, so spending money to keep them intact, or create them, may be wasteful.
"To save a few hundred thousand jobs," Ingham said, "is it necessary to spend money that's going to obligate our country, and the taxpayers of our country for decades to come, in terms of how that money is paid back?"
When asked about the affect this will have on the Panhandle, Ingham said we may see some job creation, but we may just continue on the path we are on.
