New numbers released by the federal government Friday estimate that the federal stimulus package has helped create or save 34,500 total jobs in Washington, making it the state with the third-largest reported number of stimulus jobs behind California and New York.

But there’s a caveat on those job creation numbers: 24,000 of them probably weren’t in danger in the first place.

State officials used a chunk of stimulus money to cover paychecks for 24,000 teachers who were already contracted to finish out the school year. That money came from a pot of stimulus funds given to the state to help offset budget cuts.

Without that funding, the money to pay the teachers would have come out of the state general fund, said Jill Satran, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s main adviser on stimulus projects.

That would have meant cuts elsewhere, Satran said, but the job losses that would have resulted from such cuts is difficult to quantify. Few, if any, of the 24,000 teacher jobs would have been among them, Satran said.

“It would not have likely come from those teachers,” Satran said Friday. “Somewhere along the way, we would have had to make some really dramatic cuts or looked at other options.”

Cheryl Arvidson, spokeswoman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that oversees stimulus spending, said that the federal Office of Management and Budget gave states and grant recipients guidelines on how to calculate jobs created. Beyond that, the board hasn’t taken steps to correct or challenge job numbers they’ve received, she said.

Federal agencies distributing grants had a chance to comment on the reported job numbers earlier this month, but only the reporting agencies can correct the figures, Arvidson said.

Regarding Washington state’s inclusion of the 24,000 teacher jobs in its count, “that’s a state political issue,” Arvidson said. The board is mainly responsible for getting the information to the public via the recovery.gov Web site, she said.

“We are simply reporting on our Web site what has been reported to us,” Arvidson said Friday.

The county-by-county breakdown of jobs created by state stimulus spending includes the teacher numbers that don’t fit neatly into the categories of “jobs created” or “jobs retained.”

According to state data, stimulus grants funneled through the state to Pierce County have amounted to $239 million, about $65 million of which has been spent so far. State officials estimate that money has resulted in 3,681 jobs, which includes both jobs retained – ones that supposedly would have been cut without the funding – and new jobs.

That number doesn’t include the number of jobs created by Pierce County projects that received stimulus funding directly from the federal government instead of through a state process.

One such project is in Eatonville, where town officials received $825,000 to help them complete the first phase of a town center. The project, which installs new sidewalks, pedestrian improvements and a small park with a visitor’s center, has created the equivalent of 1.65 full-time jobs, according to federal data.

Mayor Tom Smallwood said this week that work is roughly 40 percent complete on the project. He hopes it will be finished and ready for dedication in early December, he said.

“It’s pretty much on time,” Smallwood said. “I think most of the base work is done.”

Another transportation project, the Port of Tacoma’s Lincoln Avenue grade separation, received $15.4 million in stimulus funding. The railway overpass, designed to carry traffic quickly in and out of the port, is estimated to create or save the equivalent of 5.7 full-time jobs.

Construction is under way this week as workers drill holes and pour concrete for the columns that will support the overpass, said Port spokeswoman Tara Mattina. The entire project bears a price tag of roughly $58 million and is slated for completion in 2011.

“We’re really just getting started,” Mattina said.

Other stimulus-funded transportation projects are under way in Puyallup and Orting, as well as along Interstate 5 through Fife.

As of Sept. 30, the stimulus package had funded a total of 260 grants and contracts in Pierce County, according to the federal data.

In all, state agencies, local governments and businesses in Washington were awarded $5.5 billion in stimulus funding between Feb. 17 and Sept. 30, according to the data released Friday. By the end of the reporting period, about $1.4 billion had been spent statewide.

Whether the stimulus is working as intended has become a hot button political issue.

Senate Republican budget chief Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, pointed to the state’s 9.3 percent unemployment rate as proof that all is not well.

“The question is, has the stimulus affected opportunities for private, full-time employment, and certainly it hasn’t,” he said.

Zarelli said when the stimulus money runs out, the state will have to replace it or make cuts — unless the federal government sends more.

More data will be released in January as funding recipients report their progress during the next quarter of the year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Melissa Santos: 253-552-7058

melissa.santos@thenewstribune.com

STIMULUS JOB ESTIMATES

The following are estimates of jobs created per county by the stimulus money trickling down through state agencies. State agencies have about $2 billion to distribute; they’d spent about $565 million as of Sept. 30.

The numbers don’t include jobs created by federal contracts or local projects receiving stimulus money directly from the federal government.

King 7,066

Snohomish 3,768

Pierce 3,681

Spokane 2,246

Clark 1,791

Thurston 1,503

Yakima 1,200

Kitsap 1,108

To track stimulus spending, go to www.recovery.wa.gov