When we count Jobs in the Stimulus or any other program it is important to understand what is counted as a Job.
If you look at projects and resulting Jobs in stimulus projects you will see projects such as repairing a sidewalk in front of a government building - 5 Jobs.
I would think that the time to repair a sidewalk of a building would be a week and at the extreme high estimate - a month. So this is a Job that lasts for a week to four weeks and is counted as a job that has been created.
At the same time, another project may be for medical research where the project is for a one year research grant - so the Jobs created are funded for one year.
In another case, after an airport is built there are people working there and these Jobs will be there for many years without additional Federal grants - so these Jobs will last for many years as they are funded with user fees and fees paid by businesses using the airport.
When counting Jobs created, a Job that exists for one week is counted the same as a Job that is funded for a year, which is counted the same as a Job that becomes self funding.
I would like to see the estimates on the number of Jobs created from the Stimulus to break out which Jobs last for less than 1 month, last for less than 6 mo, last for a year and lastly, long term Jobs that are sustained without additional funding from the Federal government.