Jobs that there’s typically not the political will to do otherwise: public works, things that are a net public good, but aren’t profitable (or are insufficiently profitable to entire a private company to make the investment). During the Great Depression the gov’t created tens of thousands of jobs, so it’s def. not a myth. You could easily do things like de-automate jobs, or adequately staff federal agencies, use labor to build off-shore wind farms that are currently not profitable enough for private industry to build, so on and so forth. (Fed. agencies, pretty near across the board–aside from the military–have had funding and staffing cut for decades, to the point where e.g. the IRS doesn’t have enough people to go after anything more than a tine percentage of people that cheat on tax or commit tax fraud.)

IIRC, the Appalachian Trail was originally cleared during the Great Depression, and has since been maintained by volunteers. Shit, you could (and should) pay people to do it, rather than expecting them to give labor simply because they believe that the AT is a public good (which I would agree it is).

The typical ‘job creation’ is more about giving private companies tax incentives to enter an area, rather than the gov’t being them employer.