This one courtesy of the Department of Labor. Investor’s Business Daily reports:

The Department of Labor has spent $162 million on its own green jobs program, which has found steady work for just 1,336 people as of June. That’s just 2% of what the program targeted.

That works out to about $121,000 per job. The goal of the program is to train people to work at “green” energy facilities, but the jobs just haven’t materialized. Fortunately for taxpayers, the DOL’s inspector general has called foul and is urging the department to pull the plug on the program and return the remaining funds to the Treasury.

“(T)here is no evidence that grantees will effectively use the funds and deliver targeted employment outcomes by the end of the grant periods,” the IG said.
A key problem is that there are few green jobs, IG said:”According to interviews conducted early in 2011 with regional officials, grantees expressed concerns that green jobs had not materialized and job placements into unsubsidized employment had been much less than expected.”

However, the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration, which oversees the program, is refusing to relinquish the remaining $338 million.

ETA said it would ensure they were all spent over the next two years.
DOL spokesman David Roberts said it’s simply too early to be making any judgments.
“These are very new programs,” he said. “Some started in late 2009. Some started just a few months ago.”

The DOL received $500 million for the program as part of the 2009 stimulus, but has spent just a third of that since then. The money that has been spent has had fairly underwhelming results.

[The IG’s report] found that 52,762 people had gone through the program, less than half of what ETA initially projected. Just 8,035 were placed in a job and only 1,336 had been employed for six months. Whether the remaining 6,699 had also found steady work was too early to tell, IG officials told IBD.

More here.