Why Some Countries Create Jobs and Others Export People

Broadcasting from South Africa, a country of huge energy, huge potential, and brutally high unemployment, we use that lens to ask what actually creates jobs? From there, we go back to Ireland in 1990, when employment had barely moved in forty years and emigration still felt like the national destiny. So what changed? We unpack the extraordinary shift that turned Ireland from an economy exporting its young people into one of the strongest job creators in Europe: devaluation, falling interest rates, the Berlin Wall dividend, peace in the North, American investment, and a transformed national mood. Politicians love talking about “job creation,” yet jobs are not created by speeches, slogans, or government press releases. Jobs come after demand, after sales, after risk, after somebody decides to build something, sell something, and back themselves. In other words: jobs are derived from entrepreneurship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Why Some Countries Create Jobs and Others Export People is an episode from The David McWilliams Podcast by David McWilliams.

This episode is 40:25 long.

This episode was published on Mar 24, 2026.

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