We’ve all heard the Obama administration boast about the 600,000+ stimulus jobs that have been created or “saved” thus far. While those numbers may look great on paper, the question remains: Are we solving a problem or digging ourselves a much bigger ditch down the line?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides jobs for droves of unemployed taxpayers, but a lot of those jobs are attached to manual labor projects, that are temporary by nature.

All of which leads to the question: What happens once those projects are complete?

Most states don’t have the budget or the need to keep a lot of those temporary workers on, once the project is complete, which leads to a situation where the cream of the crop stay on for future projects, but a lot of those previously unemployed workers are right back where they started.

Example: This past summer, the FCC hired over 4,000 new employees to handle a short-term telemarketing project, which was funded by stimulus money. The commission was flooded with applicants and it provided temporary work for the unemployed in several U.S. cities. But once the project was finished in August, most of those employees (save for a select few who were reallocated to work on other projects) were laid off again.

The root of the problem: Stimulus jobs – by their nature – can only last as long as the stimulus money that funds them. In a perfect world, every organization that employs people using stimulus funds would submit a proposal for how its stimulus project(s) will help generate additional profit and job growth. Unless the projects are promoting expansion or generating new streams of revenue, all they’re really doing is buying time in the hopes the economy will bounce back and companies will start hiring again.

That said, the stimulus funds are providing 600,000 people with a regular (albeit temporary) paycheck and a way to make ends meet. The question is: How could this plan have been set up differently to promote long-term prosperity?

Source: “Why Stimulus Jobs Aren’t Built to Last,” by David Goldman, CNNMoney, 11/02/09