This argument has always been such a weird goalpost shift for me. Even at my full time job I am getting strung together by 3-12 month projects. Everyone works on projects. When this data center is done in a year, we'll (hopefully) need to build something else, keeping those people employed.
Like, of course it's creating a job. If you create a million 1-year jobs every year, that's a million jobs.
Because the "it'll create X jobs" implies it's ongoing. It's a disingenuous attempt to oversell the benefits because they know if they're transparent about it, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a great deal.