WASHINGTON — Businesses in the South and Southwest benefited most from the first federal contracts awarded under President Barack Obama's stimulus program, according to initial data released by a government oversight board. Military construction and environmental cleanup contributed to a boost of about 30,000 jobs.

The new job numbers — in line with expectations for such an early accounting — offer the first hard data on effects of the $787 billion stimulus program.

The figures, released Thursday, are based on jobs linked to less than $16 billion in federal contracts and represent just a sliver of the total stimulus package. But they also represent a milestone of sorts for an administration that promised unprecedented real-time data on whether the program was working.

Until now, the White House has relied on economic models to argue that the program created jobs and eased the recession. The numbers help shift the discussion from whether the program is creating jobs to whether it is creating enough to justify its enormous price tag.

"These are the most thankful employees you'll ever want to see," said Robert Del Riego, majority owner of Frederick, Md.-based Re-Engineered Business Solutions, who said he hired 33 new employees, mostly skilled laborers looking for work in the dismal construction market.

He expects to hire six more to help with water and sewer projects in Arkansas and North Carolina and small construction jobs at other sites. His company won $1.9 million in Army Corps of Engineers contracts.

"It's extra work, and with work, hopefully you make a profit," he said. "But the main thing is, it's putting real guys back to work."

The White House said the new numbers were validation the administration was on track to hit Obama's goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

"The early indications are quite positive," said White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein, who said the report "exceeds our projections."

The construction industry showed the strongest numbers in Thursday's report, accounting for about one-third of the jobs thanks to contracts to repair military bases. Despite those gains, unemployment in the construction industry remains high, at 17.1 percent. That's down from its February high of 21.4 percent.

Environmental jobs also provided a big boost. CH2M Hill, the contractor in charge of cleaning the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, said nearly 2,200 jobs, from carpenters to engineers to secretaries, had been created in southwest Washington state.

On paper, Colorado posted the largest increase of any state, more than 4,700 jobs, largely thanks to a contract to set up a call center to field questions about a change to digital cable. But the jobs were spread across multiple states, underscoring one of the many hiccups in the data. Like most contracting jobs, these were temporary, and most are already over.

California, Florida, Tennessee and Texas also showed strong gains.

New England fared poorly, with fewer than 750 jobs reported across the region. Rhode Island, which has the third highest unemployment rate in the country, reported the weakest job numbers, both overall and per capita. Businesses there reported creating or saving about six jobs.

Broader numbers on local stimulus spending, for everything from repairing public housing and building schools to repaving highways and keeping teachers off the unemployment lines, won't be available until late this month. Those figures are expected to show early stimulus money saving thousands of teaching jobs and creating construction work for highway projects nationwide.

Thursday's numbers represent such a small snapshot, they are unlikely to significantly change the debate over whether the stimulus law was the right prescription for an ailing economy.