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RALEIGH — Federal stimulus dollars are keeping thousands of people employed, information that North Carolina submitted to an oversight agency indicates.

But lawmakers, economists and other observers are cautious in evaluating what amounts to the first round of detailed information about how the stimulus is working in North Carolina, where the unemployment rate has hovered near 11 percent the past few months.

North Carolina reported late last week that federal stimulus spending flowing through state agencies has created or saved 24,442 jobs. A separate report from the Council of Economic Advisers to the president suggests that all stimulus spending — that which flowed through the state combined with direct contracts and grants from federal agencies — might have created 31,500 jobs.

“The 'saved’ part of the 'created or saved’ is the interesting thing,” said Mike Walden , an economics professor at N.C. State. When a job is created, that’s an easy thing to understand, he said.

But as stimulus spending has begun to roll out across the country, the unemployment rate has gone up.

“The question is: Without that spending, what would the unemployment rate have been?” Walden said. “The administration is having to put their hat on that a lot.”

Of the jobs “created or saved” through state spending of stimulus dollars, more than 90 percent came through two main channels: education spending on teachers and other school personnel and expenditures to help keep the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor running.

The state reported that 19,260 jobs were saved with fiscal stabilization funds, the pots of money given to state governments to help them bridge budget deficits. Another 3,130 jobs came from grants made under three federal education programs.

“Being able to avoid layoffs is just as important as adding new jobs,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison , a Greensboro Democrat. Workers who lose their income, she said, not only have less money to spend but put additional strain on unemployment insurance, public health insurance and the like.

“We’d all like to be creating new jobs, too,” Harrison said.

Rep. Joe Tolson , a Pinetops Democrat who heads the House oversight committee that keeps tabs on stimulus funding, said he had not been fully briefed on the latest figures but it appeared the federal spending program was having its desired effect.

“We’re seeing positive signs,” he said. “I was with a company yesterday just touring around, and they said they were beginning to see people be interested in spending.”

But like others looking at the stimulus and the economy as a whole, Tolson said it’s too soon to say the state is out of the woods and impossible to parse out how much recovery is caused by stimulus spending versus other factors.

“One of the last pieces to fall into place is employment,” Tolson said. “If we see that come along, we’ll really know we are on the way to recovery.”

The state reports come as Recovery.gov, the reporting arm of an independent watchdog agency, put out some of the first national jobs figures related to the stimulus.

But the 30,383 jobs reportedly created nationally come only from federal contracts given directly to nonprofits or businesses, about 7 percent of the stimulus spending.

That figure does not include most of the money spent by states or given in grants, which Recovery.org is set to reveal at the end of the month.

Even in the state figures, there’s a great deal of uncertainty.

For example, it’s unclear whether highway construction jobs will last much beyond the end of the stimulus spending.

As well, millions of dollars have been set aside for North Carolina but not been spent, so those millions have not created any jobs. And it is possible that agencies will never be able to fix a jobs “created or saved” figure to some of the stimulus spending.

“It may not create a directly attributable job, but any time money gets spent, it’s usually going to have an impact on employment,” said Walden, the economist. “As those funds flow through the economy, supplies may be bought or services purchased, and that has an effect on employment.”

John Hood , who heads the conservative John Locke Foundation , is skeptical that the stimulus is creating or saving any jobs, adding that it’s unsurprising that most of jobs credited to the stimulus are tied to government programs.

“It underlines the fact that the stimulus bill was really a bailout bill for the state and local governments,” Hood said. “States and local governments can’t borrow money to cover current operations, so the federal government did it for them.”

Rather than creating jobs, Hood said, the stimulus shifted money from the private sector to governments.

“It’s fairly clear there is no net job creation in the short run at all,” Hood said.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com