Originally Posted by Geckko

All right then (more in hope than expectation).

Firstly we are dealing with things that are extremely widely accepted in the field of economics.

There are two ways I would try to explain in the absence of any training in economics on your part. One practical, the other theoretical. Let's see where we get with the former first.

Around 2 years ago there was around 250,000 people directly employed in the construction industry in Ireland. That was not evidience of a good thing. It was not a good thing that more and more people were being employed in the construction sector. In this case we can say with a decent measure of cinfidence that it was in fact a bad thing (not simply an amiguous fact in this case).

[note that we are discussing the point that creation of jobs is not necessarily a good thing - not on its own a good measure of whether some economic development is worthwhile]

Most people would accept that intuitively. But if you can't or don't the reason can be explained.

The reason is because the output of the industry had virtually zero value towards the end of the cycle - creating things (houses etc.) for which there was no need and hence no value.

You might as well have taken the money borrowed from the banks by the developers and given it to the construction workers as wages (or a proportion of them) and not made them do anything at all - let them stay at home. No diference between that and going to the effort of building rafts of accomodation that will never be needed in places people don't want to live (now that prices are normalising). In economics terms - there was negative value added - the value of all the labour and materials that went into the industry was higher than the vlaue of what came out the other end as output.

So that is an example where saying "it will create jobs" is not a good thing.