Companies are more aligned towards creating value than Hole Inc because they have a profit motive, and presumably can only make money from voluntary transactions. The "creating jobs" thing makes sense when it's taken implicitly that the market will demand that any jobs you create will be worth something to someone.

Also, a hole-based stimulus package might actually help the town's economy, just like a big government project to paint murals on every wall would. So in a sense, towns are agnostic about the big picture. This shows the mindset of the politicians who are trying to create jobs: the value provided to them is the income that the employees make, which they can tax the spending of.

You don't talk about creating jobs if you are a customer that will be buying the products of the big plant. In fact, creating jobs is a negative (an expense) for every organization involved except for the local government. It is the customers of US steel that care about the importance of whatever it is that the jobs are doing, and the local government that cares about the existence of the jobs.