You can't inflate one number that way one without doing the same for the other. I suspect there are more peripheral jobs created per startup-job than are destroyed per manufacturing-layoff, though.
Ahh the joy of manufacturing. Each manufacturing plant pays for tons of raw materials, engineers to design the product, engineers to design the machine the workers are working, security inspectors to make sure the machines are safe, government regulators, now cascade that down to the machine makers. I haven't even got to the-general public side of things (food, shopping).
I seriously doubt that more peripheral jobs are created per startup than those destroyed per manufacturing. But hey maybe I'm biased I did grow up right outside of Detroit.
One of the beauties of startups, as labeled by pg, is that they can be begun with almost no capital but time -- because they don't require almost anything in the way of external equipment & services. They can be very self-contained, rather than interdependent; no supply chain needed, etc.
You're thinking about the demand side (to be able to do X, you must do the following job-creating activities), but I'm talking about the supply side (once you've done X, it enables people to do the following job-creating activities). So a company like Wufoo or Weebly can make it cheaper for other companies to grow, adding more jobs.
In fact, I'm certain Wufoo has helped create jobs, in the sense that I've filled out job applications built on Wufoo forms. The fact that Wufoo was chosen over other solutions means that, in at least some cases, the existence of Wufoo will lead to job applications being created that otherwise would not have been.
This is the point PG was making. He didn't talk about how Viaweb created lots of jobs because they bought a bunch of servers and had to pay their rent; he's talking about how they let other people cheaply start stores that otherwise wouldn't have started, connect to customers they otherwise wouldn't have found, sell products that otherwise would have sat on a shelf, and make wealth that otherwise would not have existed.
That may be true because Viaweb was the first, and for a long time, only thing that fit that description.
Wufoo, on the other hand, is just one of about 20-30 choices for online forms. Including, of course, paying a lackey on elance $15 to do it. (Now elance, they haven't created jobs, but they did do a lot to move labor around.)
