As the unemployment crisis grinds on, states are trying to both lure and retain businesses by offering tax breaks, grants, cheap loans — just about anything (short of candy and foot massages) they can think of. But how many jobs do these expensive incentives actually create?

And are the jobs any good?

Economic development programs cost states and cities billions of dollars a year, but many programs require little if any job creation, fewer than half call for wage standards, and fewer than a quarter require the companies to provide health care for their workers, according to a study of program requirements scheduled to be released Wednesday by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research organization that tracks corporate subsidies. Some merely require companies to invest in plants or new equipment, which could actually enable them to reduce their head counts.

States’ desperation to hold on to jobs was vividly illustrated this week in Illinois, which is so short of money that it has been unable to pay its bills on time in recent years. After Sears and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were courted by other states, the Illinois Legislature passed large tax breaks to keep them where they are, over the objections of protesters who unfurled a “Stop Corporate Extortion” banner in the Illinois House chamber on Monday.

The new tax breaks will save Sears — which got a big retention package just over 20 years ago, when it left the Sears Tower in Chicago for suburban Hoffman Estates — an estimated $15 million a year. They will save the state’s financial exchanges an estimated $85 million a year.