Here's a new, mind-blasting economic statistic about the $787-billion economic stimulus package assembled by Democratic Sens. Nancy Pelosi of California and Harry Reid of Nevada for President Obama and the longtime, now-former senator from Delaware.

So far, thanks to this stimulus plan, national unemployment has climbed from about 8% to 10%. Vice President Biden often recounts the awful economic mess the Democrats inherited from the party of Lincoln and the brush cutter from Texas.

And Biden says, with considerable candor and a fair amount of understatement, that much work remains to be done to restart the economy. He's now reduced to hailing as progress the fact that one out of 10 U.S. workers is unemployed.

According to its own shovel-ready recovery numbers, the nearly 11-month-old Democratic administration claims to have created 640,329 good ol' American jobs so far this year by spending $157.8 billion of that stimulus money.

Now, that works out to a cost of $246,436 per job created, according to figures dug up by the eagle-eyed James Pethokoukis over at Reuters.

Total compensation earned by the average American payroll employee during the month of October was $59,867 on an annualized basis, Pethokoukis reports. That's only 24% of the nearly quarter-million dollars it costs the federal government to create that spot.

Had Obama and Biden simply handed out to unemployed individuals $60,000 as a year's salary, they could have paid for 2.6 million jobs -- four times as many jobs that have been created. That's the kind of disastrous return on investment that could cost a banker his bonus.

On the other hand, simply handing out money to nearly 3 million people would have drastically curtailed the nation's 2009 production of ribbon-cutting photo ops in congressional districts across the land.