When considering whether the Northern Pass project is good or bad for New Hampshire, it would be a mistake to linger for long on the alleged number of construction jobs.

Northern Pass officials have claimed that building the massive transmission line would employ 1,200 people over three years, resulting in $250 million in economic gains for New Hampshire. Those figures certainly represent a best-case scenario, as corporate sales-pitch numbers tend to do. Now a rival study, funded by local independent power producers — competitors of Northern Pass — concludes that the real jobs impact of the construction would be about half of what Northern Pass asserts.

Economist Brian Gottlob notes, as others have before, that most of the jobs are so specialized that Granite Staters, particularly North Country residents, won’t qualify for the work. He figures that total hires, including out-of-state contractors, would come to about half of what Northern Pass projects, and that New Hampshire businesses could expect to receive “no more than 11 to 19 percent of project expenditures.”

The truth is probably somewhere in between, as these are just estimates and both sides have incentives to be less than impartial. It is more important to keep in mind that, either way, short-term construction jobs are only a tangential concern. The real issue is whether Northern Pass would be a net benefit for New Hampshire in the long run.

To figure that out, one needs to weigh the impact on the landscape and the local communities against the effect on electricity rates and property tax revenue. It is similar to evaluating a new highway. It would be foolish to decide to build an interstate highway through New Hampshire because building the highway would create a few jobs for a few years. If that were the proper measure of a project’s worth, then New Hampshire would be drastically improved if we employed people to cut down our forests and build Lego castles in their place. It’s the long-term value of the infrastructure that’s left after construction vs. the value of what is there now that really matters.