Saving jobs?

I always reprimand protectionism and I find it somewhat tirying to always make the same basic case to protectionnist, so sometimes I just abandon the fight. However, I love when numbers pop out of nowhere to defend protectionism. A colleague of mine at the university believed he had to defend protectionnism for the sugar industry and said that in the United States, it was saving the jobs of thousands of Americans. He said something close to 2,000 individuals for the particular sugar industry. When I returned to the appartment, I decided to google that number and I found a piece in the Washington Times where the author quotes a research from the Institute for International Economics.

Basically, he was right, there are indeed two thousands jobs saved in the sugar industry. According to the study quoted, 2,261 jobs were saved in the 1990s thanks to quotas and tarriffs. However, since sugar is a pretty common input for several foodstuffs, the average household paid $21 more per year for sugar. Multiply that amount by the number of households in the United States and then divide it by the 2,261 jobs saved and you end up with a cost of $826 000 per job saved.

Now I hate to be a ballbuster (not really but lets pretend), if I wanted to create 2,261 jobs I could find considerably less costly ways of doing so, if those jobs were worth saving that is (a hard question to ask, and answer).