Job gains difficult to quantify

The US government released figures recently that showed nearly $4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had been awarded to Massachusetts governmental entities, businesses, and nonprofit groups as of the end of last month, and put the number of jobs created or saved through the spending at 12,374.

But a Globe review of the figures last week found the jobs number was exaggerated. Its report cited instances in which recipients were given credit for more jobs than they had created, some through inaccurate counts or reflecting projects not yet started.

The $787 billion stimulus law has generated $411.9 million in funding for area communities, according to the US website tracking program, www.recovery.gov.

Leading the way among local recipients are Andover, with $66.1 million; Lowell, with $62.4 million; Lynn, with $34.7 million, and Lawrence, with $33.6 million. The least money flowed to Nahant, which has seen only $85,200. The website lists stimulus awards for all public and private projects within a community, not just those undertaken by the municipality. In some cases, state and federal projects represent a major share. Of the $66.1 million going to Andover, for instance, $57.1 million is for a project to modernize the Internal Revenue Service processing center on Route 133, the website reports.

Businesses receiving a boost from the program include Bethany Homes Inc., which manages subsidized senior housing in Haverhill. The company was awarded two rental-assistance grants totaling $586,120 from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that, according to the federal website, created or saved a combined 17 clerical and maintenance jobs.

Pam Perron, finance clerk with Bethany Homes, said she questioned whether the stimulus money could be credited with those jobs, noting that it helped to fund contracts the company likely would have received anyway, as it has in past years.

“These are contracts we normally get. They are just paying for it with stimulus money,’’ she said. “I wouldn’t really call it stimulus money at all. They just labeled it that way.’’

But other recipients say the money is providing an employment boost.

Physical Sciences Inc., a research and development operation in Andover, was awarded $116,751 by the National Institutes of Health to help develop a monitoring instrument for cancer treatments that use low-intensity lasers.

Steven Davis, executive vice president of its applied sciences division, said the money will pay for a new researcher to work full time on the project, and help retain two other jobs.

“It clearly is being used to create employment and also to try to speed up the research,’’ he said of the grant.

Physical Sciences received a separate National Institutes of Health grant for $56,313 to help with its development of an instrument to examine retinas for early signs of age-related macular degeneration, a key cause of blindness in older adults.

While the funding was not credited with any new or retained jobs, Davis said it has the strong potential for indirectly boosting employment, since the development of the optical instrument would create jobs in manufacturing and medical research centers.

Pathways for Children, a Gloucester early education agency, received a $91,435 stimulus award for its Head Start program from the federal Administration for Children and Families.

The money is helping to pay the salary of a teacher who would otherwise have been laid off, according to Sue Todd, Pathway’s president and chief executive officer, as well as provide expanded staff training, pay for several teachers to add certification, and cover a one-year, 1.17 percent cost-of-living raise for teachers.

Todd acknowledged that the figure for the number of jobs created or saved by the grant - 3.59 - may seem inflated, based on how the money is being used, but said that her agency simply followed a formula provided by the federal government.

“Quite frankly, we struggled with the way to report this. The feds have acknowledged it was confusing,’’ Todd said, adding that reports due in January are expected to “reflect a much more realistic assessment of jobs created or saved.’’

But she said there was no doubt in her mind that the stimulus money is helping: “Any time there can be an investment made in training and in enhancing even to a modest degree professional teaching salaries, it benefits the children.’’

Endicott College in Beverly received $34,929 from the US Department of Education, a grant that the federal website lists as having created or saved the full-time equivalent of four student work-study jobs.

Donna Couture, the college’s treasurer, said the stimulus money is part of an overall $200,000 federal allocation Endicott received for its work-study program, which provides employment on campus to students with financial need.

She acknowledged that Endicott received nearly as much - $190,000 - in US aid for the work-study program last year, before the stimulus program was launched. But Couture said she believes the stimulus money was valuable this year as well.

“If not for this $35,000, maybe our allocation would have been less and we would not have had those funds available for our students with financial need.’’