Job preservation an inexact science

A broad interpretation of what it means to preserve an education job has allowed Nevada and other states to publicize sizeable overall employment gains from the first allocation of federal stimulus funds.

Nevada reports it has been able to save about 3,500 public education jobs because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to state and federal data that track stimulus-related job creation and retention. That represents more than 60 percent of all jobs in the state attributed so far to the Recovery Act.

But the count of education jobs is not specific to certain positions.

It is instead an imprecise answer to a hypothetical question: How many K-12 and higher education jobs might have been cut had stimulus funds not helped fill holes in existing operating budgets?

With a method suggested by federal guidelines and approved by Gov. Jim Gibbons' office, state education officials arrived at a figure by dividing the average salary and benefits of employees into the total pool of "fiscal stabilization" money allocated this year to the K-12 and higher education systems, $139.6 million and $92.4 million respectively.

That formula yielded "jobs saved" numbers of nearly 2,100 at Nevada's public schools -- 1,200 of them in Clark County -- and 1,500 at the state's colleges and universities. Even with stimulus funding, the state's K-12 and higher education budgets didn't show a net gain from previous years.

But in what has become a popular refrain across the country, state education officials say they came up with a jobs estimate only because the federal government required them to do so.

"It's impossible to say what number of full-time employees is supported by stabilization funds," said Victor Redding, budget director of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

"What these numbers do show is that (the stimulus) has had a large impact on budgets," Redding told the Nevada Board of Regents earlier this month. "But those funds will not be available to the state after 2010-11."

Redding said he expects the job reporting requirements issued by the federal government to change next year.

Several regents questioned whether "jobs saved" estimates were worth making.

"This job calculation is a bit of a fool's errand," Regent Ron Knecht said. "One should not really believe any of these numbers, claims and conclusions."

The actual impact of stimulus funding isn't something that can be easily quantified, said James Wells, deputy superintendent of finance for the Nevada Department of Education.

"Had that stabilization funding not been there, it's extremely difficult to say what would have happened," Wells said.

Bruce Hunter, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said states decided on their own how to define a job that was saved by stimulus.

"There was no standard way of doing it," he said. "Everybody made an estimation based on their local circumstances."

Nevada isn't the only state whose jobs report is driven by the education sector. Through September, half of all jobs across the country created or retained with Recovery Act funding, more than 300,000 in all, were in education, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

The report cautioned, however, about the accuracy of all stimulus job figures: "The impact may be higher or lower than the reported number for several reasons. ... One factor that could make the reported figure too high is that recipients' reports may include some employment that would have occurred without (the Recovery Act)."

The inexactness of Nevada's method was revealed earlier this month after higher education officials found an inconsistency in the data they used to calculate the number of jobs saved.

In an attempt to better estimate the type of jobs preserved with stimulus funding, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas used the salaries of part-time faculty and graduate assistants, which lowered the state's overall average for higher education personnel to only $45,000. In reality, the average salary statewide should have been about $65,000, Redding said.

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon@review journal.com or 702-383-0404.