No longer is the government estimating how many jobs are being created by stimulus funds.

The Office of Management and Budget told agencies that coming up with accurate data on the number of jobs "created or saved" by Recovery Act projects is too challenging.

Instead, recipients of stimulus funds must count anyone who works on projects funded by stimulus money — even employees whose jobs were never at risk, OMB told agencies in a memo issued in late December.

Critics said the original OMB guidance of counting jobs "created or saved" was too subjective, because it required companies to decide which jobs would have been eliminated were it not for stimulus funds. "The updated guidance eliminates this subjective assessment and defines jobs created or retained as those funded in the quarter by the Recovery Act," said OMB's Dec. 21 memorandum.

The new guidance could ultimately drive up the number of stimulus jobs reported by recipients each quarter. An auto worker who builds cars for the federal government under a stimulus contract, for example, would be counted as a stimulus job — even if he was in no danger of being laid off.

The new memo also dropped the requirement that the White House keep a cumulative tally of jobs created or saved; instead, it will only post quarterly data on Recovery.gov, the stimulus oversight Web site.

"We're trying to make it as easy and simple [as possible] for the funding recipients," said Tom Gavin, a spokesman for OMB.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, complained about the new rules in a letter sent last week to Earl Devaney, the government's top stimulus watchdog. Issa said the new rules would confuse the public, and that dropping the cumulative requirement would make it impossible to track the overall effects of the stimulus package.

"A library that begins paying two pre-existing full-time librarians with Recovery Act funds must count two additional full-time equivalents toward the overall job totals, even though the two workers were not hired as a result of the Recovery Act, and regardless of whether their jobs were ever in danger," Issa wrote to Devaney, who is chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

Issa urged Devaney to educate the public about the new rules, but didn't propose a solution for making the data more accurate.

Edward Pound, a spokesman for Devaney, declined to comment on the letter, but said Devaney would respond soon. He also said Devaney supported the new guidance, and that he agreed with OMB that the "jobs saved" metric was too subjective.

The White House released its first batch of data in October, which claimed that 640,329 jobs were created or saved by the stimulus bill; Devaney's office acknowledged that the data was full of errors. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is responsible for posting the data online — but not for verifying its accuracy.

Tell us what you think. E-mail GREGG CARLSTROM.