(CONCORD, NH) The federal government’s Recovery.gov website claims that the stimulus package has funded nearly twice as many jobs as the most recent report by state officials. New Hampshire’s Office of Economic Stimulus reported last week that money from the Americans Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded 776 full-time positions through the end of 2009. But the government’s Recovery.gov database lists nearly 1,300 jobs credited to the stimulus in the Granite State. Both reports are still well short of the 16,000 jobs that the Obama Administration projected would be created or saved by the stimulus act.

NH DOT Project on Recovery.gov Database

The differences between the two job numbers stem from using different methods to calculate the economic impact of the $787 billion spending bill. According to the Nashua Telegraph, New Hampshire officials base their report on the number of hours of work paid for with federal money, whether or not the job was created by the stimulus act.

The new report doesn’t specify jobs created or saved, but instead uses a full-time equivalence formula. The total devised by that formula, for the period between October and December, was 331,392 work hours, the stimulus office said in a report released Wednesday. That hour figure amounts to 776 full-time jobs, the office said.

But that doesn’t mean 776 people held 776 jobs.

For example, if two paving company employees worked 520 hours and a third employee worked 260 hours, those hours are totaled (1,300) and divided by the total of full-time hours an employee could have worked between October and December (520). That equals 2.5 full-time jobs.

Project for "State of NH" on Recovery.gov Database

The federal database is a compilation of reports from stimulus recipients themselves. The website’s overseers have dismissed past reports on massive data errors, including the presence of Phantom Congressional Districts and non-existent Zip Codes, as the result of data entry errors from stimulus recipients.

Ed Pound, spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said that the phantom ZIP Codes are “nonsense” and “much ado about nothing,” considering the 131,000 reports listed on the site.

“This is simply human error,” he said. “Just because recipients inverted ZIP Codes (at the place of performance) does not mean that the money is going to some phantom place.”

White Rock Cooperative Estates project on Recovery.gov Database

In New Hampshire, Recovery.gov shows millions of dollars being spent on projects with little or no job creation. A search of the site’s New Hampshire data shows scores of projects with no jobs reported. A $1.7 million sewer line in project in Tilton at White Rock Cooperative Estates lists a single job being created. Stimulus Watch, an open source website not affiliated with Recovery.gov or the federal government, lists that job as an Attorney.

Since New Hampshire officials reported their data in terms of hours worked rather than positions created or saved, the Recovery.gov database shows fractional jobs. A project simply titled “State of NH” shows over $5 million spent to create 0.40 jobs, which works out to over $12.5 million for a single full time job. And another project within New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation received $300,000 to create 0.01 jobs, a cost of $30 million per job.

President Barack Obama will return to New Hampshire tomorrow for a Town Hall style meeting in Nashua. According to the Union Leader, the President will focus on job creation and the economy.