 IT'S the economy, stupid! Modern elections are about jobs. No incumbent US president has been re-elected with unemployment running at over 8 per cent. It is currently 8.8 per cent, which must be causing Barack Obama some sleepless nights.  In this respect, Scotland is no different from america. In their Holyrood manifestos, the main parties are vying with each other to promise more jobs. The Lib Dems offered a paltry 100,000, ostensibly to be funded by selling off Scottish Water. (Sadly, no one told Tavish Scott that the Treasury would dock the GBP1.5 billion receipt from Scotland's block grant.)  Launching Labour's Holyrood manifesto, party leader Iain Gray upped the ante and declared: "I think Scotland needs bold and ambitious plans now and that's why we've committed ourselves to creating 250,000 jobs by the end of the decade."  a bold claim indeed, even assuming politicians can create jobs by fiat. It would mean securing an average of 25,000 jobs every year for a decade in the current economic climate of slow growth, weak consumer demand and intense competition from asia.  according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), there were 2.46 million Scottish jobs in 1997 when New Labour came to power at Westminster. By 2008, at the top of the biggest economic boom Britain and the world has ever seen, there were 2.74 million jobs north of the Border - an increase of around 280,000.  Mr Gray is promising to do roughly as well on the jobs front as during the late, great international bubble. He says he will pay for it from "savings" in the Holyrood budget - the very same budget now being slashed by the Treasury.  The SNP manifesto is published next week. It too is certain to focus on the economy. alex Salmond is running hard on his record. Despite the lack of powers under devolution, the SNP government made a good fist of protecting jobs during the 2008-9 recession and its aftermath.  Scotland entered the downturn after the UK and spent less time in recession. By frontloading capital spending, John Swinney, the finance secretary, engineered a rise in the number of jobs in the Scottish economy in the latter part of 2010. In the same period, the number of UK jobs went into decline. The latest ONS figures show that a larger proportion of the workforce is in a job in Scotland, than in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, or the UK.  However, unemployment remains at 8.1 per cent in Scotland. That's better than London (9.4), the English North East (10.2) or the West Midlands (9.9). Yet the SNP government could find itself judged on how it plans to get Scotland back to work.  Where might new jobs be found? In the new social networking technology, perhaps? according to The Great Stagnation, a provocative new book by american economist Tyler Cowen, the answer is a big, fat "no". Tyler argues: "Web activities do not generate jobs and revenues at the rate of past technological innovations".  For example, the iPod has created fewer than 14,000 jobs in america. Facebook employs fewer than 2,000 people in the US economy and Twitter under 300.  Tyler's pessimistic conclusions point to a world where economic recovery is going to result in no increase in jobs, at least in the West. Where does that leave Scotland? Fortunately, we have one unique home advantage - wind and sea energy to exploit and export in a world desperate for power.  The SNP will put such an industrial revolution at the heart of its manifesto. Hard on adopting the SNP's policies on free prescriptions, no university tuition fees, and a council tax freeze, Iain Gray has also been converted to the economic potential of renewables. He is promising 60,000 new jobs in green energy by 2015. However, an election bidding war over job numbers will prove futile. Instead, we need to focus on what has to be done to create a market for private investment that can successfully exploit Scotland's wind p 