Invisible Recovery

$25 million for transportation vehicle maintenance from the state, preserving 190 positions of the state total. Another $35.8 million transportation contract bought King County 60 new 40-foot, hybrid diesel-electric buses and funded their maintenance for a year.

In all, King County took in $79.6 million for transportation projects, by far the county's biggest funding category out of the $97.5 million the county received in all stimulus funding.

The big win here: With the construction industry severely depressed, bids came in low. DOT spokeswoman Melanie Coon reports that with 33 state stimulus-funded construction projects bid out so far, bids have come in an average of 29 percent below project estimates. Coon says the savings will be used to fund seven additional transportation projects.

The UW: $189.7 million

University of Washington research facilities were big stimulus winners, scoring more than 400 separate grant awards. This number puts the UW second only to the University of Michigan in stimulus awards from the National Institutes of Health, the UW's biggest grantor.

The UW counts only 72 jobs created, and 738 retained from its funding as of January. Workers here tend to be well paid, though, in the high five figures and beyond.

One of those who landed new work is Bryan Paeper, a former contract employee for Merck who was looking for "something more stable," with benefits. He's now a research coordinator at the UW's Northwest Genomic Center, managing a gene sequencing group. The Center took in more than $25 million, and Paeper got a challenging position with a team that'll be trying to identify single-gene mutations implicated in diseases where the cause is currently unknown.

"It's going to be an exciting couple of years," he predicts.

The Safety Net: $956 million

Nearly $1 billion in stimulus funding went to the state to plug social-service budget holes. This funding wasn't as much a job creator as it was a service provider-most of the money went out the door in June in the form of food package distribution to nearly 15,000 individuals in the state's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program. An additional 40,000 other poor households were given $20 to $30 a month in cash aid.

Some of the social service funding trickles down to local nonprofit agencies, which are creating jobs to serve the Puget Sound region's swollen population of unemployed. It's a smattering of work here and there, but each job translates to a lot more services for needy people in the region.

At Wellspring Family Services (formerly Family Services of King County), spokeswoman Patricia Gray says the $896,690 it received will be spread over two years to fund five new case workers in housing services. These positions pay between $37,000 and $44,000 a year. Case managers will work with 300 families that are either homeless or facing eviction. Part of the resources will also be available for up to three months of rental assistance.

City of Seattle: $72 million

In Seattle, too, stimulus funding has so far been mostly a job saver. Jen Chan, the city of Seattle's federal stimulus coordinator, says the tally is only about 10 new positions through September 2009, because most of the actual money hasn't been spent yet. The biggest chunks of funding: a $20 million project with carmaker Nissan to create plug-in stations around the city ahead of the release of new plug-in electric cars in the fall of 2010, and $15 million for widening the Spokane Street viaduct.

So there you have it. But whatever happens, in about 18 months, it'll all end. Most of the stimulus funding must be spent or forfeited by fall 2011.