Syracuse » State highway officials say the federal economic stimulus program has created 6,000 jobs, but that's only on paper.

Transportation commissioners acknowledged Wednesday that the federal formula used to estimate jobs includes workers who may labor on one contract and then another, and is inflated.

Utah Department of Transportation Executive Director John Njord reported the job estimate at between 6,000 and 7,000. That's based on the $198 million that the federal government already has committed to Utah -- about $7 million already spent -- and it includes service workers whose wages the construction workers help support.

But it's a phony number, Transportation Commissioner Kent Millington said at the Commission's meeting Wednesday.

"I know why they [say] that," Millington said of the Federal Highway Administration's formula, "because the stimulus money was supposed to create all these jobs."

The reality is that some of those jobs are preserved -- not created -- and some of the construction workers are counted twice because they will be employed on one short contract and then another, he said.

Six thousand is "a dangerous assumption," Millington said, though the highway program is "having a tremendous impact on the economy of the state."

Njord agreed that the formula may overstate the effects of the stimulus, important as he believes they are.

"We may not be creating jobs, but I think there's no question that we are preserving jobs," he said.

The stimulus legislation requires states to report an actual head count of affected construction contract workers, but not until October.