[tshirthoodie]

Just say the number of jobs actually being created. Nobody in Michigan thinks any job is permanent no matter what you say.

Or just say "job-years". Anyone reading such an article will know what it means but there's no harm in defining it either.

There is obviously no excuse for just lying, and if it was unintentional then the responsible person should lose some job-years of their own.

[bcrosby95]

I think it's less lying and more having no incentive to inform people as to what it actually means.

I agree that calling them "job-years" would clear it up but I think politicians would get a lot more pushback against these deals if people knew. So they don't. For a long time I wondered what these numbers meant, and sometime in my 30s I did some looking into it.

Now whenever one of these deals comes up I like to pop in a little comment to help inform people.