WASHINGTON — The stimulus isn’t doing a thing to help the unemployment rate in the New York metro area, according to shocking new White House data released yesterday.

The feds have spent a half-billion dollars on 10 of the largest government stimulus contracts in New York City and Long Island — but created or retained only 54 jobs.

That’s an astounding $9 million per job.

The largest contract, at Brookhaven labs on Long Island for $261 million, has put only 26 people on the payroll, while two contracts for $23 million apiece to rehab the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Manhattan hasn’t created a single job, according to new data.

A $53 million contract to fix a Brooklyn post office created just a third of a job, while a $5.5 million plumbing contract for a federal courthouse didn’t create any.

Statewide, New York has gotten $776 million in government contracts through the stimulus, creating or saving 656 jobs, according to the data, which the feds compile from contractors.

Nationally, 30,000 jobs were created by $16 billion in contracts.

The contracts don’t include the bulk of stimulus funding, which went to tax cuts, construction projects and other programs with job-creating effects, and may exclude subcontractors and money sitting in company bank accounts.

Pete Genzer of the Brookhaven National Laboratory said the jobs figure was low because it doesn’t include subcontractors building a massive accelerator project.

“Right now we have 140 people working on the light-source project who are funded by [the stimulus],” he said, adding that another 100 are on a nuclear cleanup project.

A $15 million contract for the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research on Long Island to test new ways to treat schizophrenia has created just 3.8 jobs.

But John Kane, who runs the program, said, “If we are successful in helping people with this illness, it means that many of the people helped by it could get jobs and function in the community.”

White House economist Jared Bernstein said, “It is too soon to draw any global conclusions from this partial and preliminary data.

“It reports on just $16 billion of the $339 billion in Recovery Act efforts before Sept. 30.”

geoff.earle@nypost.com

