This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 17, 2009 - Congressional districts that include parts of the St. Louis area would add or preserve 60,000 jobs because of the stimulus package passed by Congress last week, according to figures released by the White House Tuesday.
The numbers came out a few hours before President Barack Obama was set to sign the plan into law at a ceremony in Denver.
The White House numbers said Missouri would add or preserve 69,000 jobs; in Illinois, the employment impact would be 148,000 jobs. Overall, the stimulus package is expected to create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years in a range of industries from clean energy to health care, with more than 90 percent of them located in the private sector, the White House said.
Broken out by congressional district, the job numbers look like this:
In Missouri:
District 1 (Clay) 7,000
District 2 (Akin) 8,100
District 3 (Carnahan) 7,800
District 8 (Emerson) 7,300
District 9 (Luetkemeyer) 7,900
In Illinois:
District 12 (Costello) 7,400
District 17 (Hare) 7,000
District 19 (Shimkus) 7,600
The estimates are derived from an analysis of the overall employment impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act conducted by Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden.