Just 2,240?

That's the number of jobs that have been created (or saved) in California from the stimulus, all of them from federal contracts. Nationwide, it's just over 30,000 - hardly making a dent in the unemployment numbers. Actually, California has it better than, say, Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate - 15.2 percent - and created or saved only 400 jobs. From the NYT:

In many cases federal agencies could not steer their contracts to high-unemployment areas: the stimulus act gave the agencies money for existing federal programs and priorities. So the roughly $6 billion that the Department of Energy was given to clean up nuclear sites, for example, which was the biggest source of federal contracts, must be spent where the nuclear waste is.

The data yielded some interesting political tidbits. While no Republicans in the House voted for the stimulus bill, the five congressional districts that appeared to be getting the most money in federal stimulus contracts so far are all represented by Republicans. And though Democrats control the House, it appeared that more money was being spent for work in districts held by Republicans.

This data, available at recovery.gov, is very sketchy and hardly reflective, one way or another, of whether the stimulus program will make an imprint on the recovery. If nothing else, it demonstrates how long it takes to funnel all those federal dollars into the economy.