Fact checking is a lost art.
Via NRO
During the sequestration debate, defense contractors were extremely vocal about the damage the cuts would do to economic growth and job creation. The aerospace industry produced some academic research that showed that over a million jobs would be lost if the cuts were implemented. The U.S,’s biggest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, argued that the development and construction of its troubled F-35 combat aircraft was a significant source of economic growth that had created 125,000 jobs: 32,500 direct and 92,500 “indirect” jobs, in 46 states. The company, in fact, describes the F-35 as “the single largest job creator in the Department of Defense program.”
Now a new report by William Hartung of the Center for International Policy just came out showing that Lockheed Martin is vastly exaggerating the number of jobs supported by the F-35. The key point in the report is the following:
The ratio of direct jobs to total jobs in the Lockheed Martin estimate far exceeds the ratio suggested by other studies in the field. Lockheed Martin claims that the 125,000 jobs created by the F-35 include 32,500 direct jobs and 92,500 indirect jobs. So the 125,000 total jobs are nearly four times the 32,500 figure for direct jobs (3.85, to be exact). By contrast, a 2011 analysis by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the University of Massachusetts estimates total jobs per billion dollars generated by Pentagon spending at 11,200, with 6,800 of those being direct jobs. That puts total jobs at 1.6 times direct jobs, far lower than Lockheed Martin’s figure of 3.85. Even an Aerospace Industries Association-funded study by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University suggests a ratio of direct to total jobs that is considerably less than the figure used by Lockheed Martin in its study.5
Applying the less generous ratio from the University of Massachusetts study to the figure of 32,500 direct jobs would put total jobs generated by the F-35 program in the range of 50,000 to 60,000 jobs, or less than half the 125,000 jobs claimed by Lockheed Martin. The number of F-35 jobs per state claimed in Lockheed Martin materials would come down by more than one-half as well. The distribution of the reductions is hard to specify without knowing more about how Lockheed Martin came up with its numbers.