Words often mean less than they imply. When the Kitsap Regional Economic Development Council speaks about its focus on “primary jobs,” rather than “secondary” jobs, should some employers and employees feel slighted because they fall into the latter category? After all, doesn’t this imply they are less valuable, or second-rate? Not at all.

It’s just economic development shorthand referring to workers who produce goods or services sold outside of the region where they work; in KREDC’s case, outside Kitsap County. These jobs bring fresh money into our local economy. In contrast, all other jobs are in the secondary classification, meaning that they absorb and circulate the new dollars brought into the community by primary jobs.

Primary workers produce boards trucked by ferry to the Eastside by Kingston Lumber, light projectors marked via the Internet by BOXLIGHT Corporation, ergonomically designed furniture by Watson Furniture Systems, software solutions for global tracking by Airbiquity Corporation, answers to worldwide users of Nextel Communication’s equipment from their planned call center, and designs for far-off clients of Art Anderson Associates.

They also produce or service Trident submarines, carriers and missiles that are presumably not meant for local consumption. In a curious twist, our hospitality industry also consists of primary jobs, since they sell services to outsiders who reduce our shipping costs by coming over here to pick them up! And what about our retirees and commuters? Well, it is probably easiest to think of them also as brining in primary incomes since they tend to get their funds from outside the county, even though the retirees receive residuals on prior work.

Each of these goods and services provides income to our primary workers and brings fresh money into our community. The trick is in keeping it here. If a community has a mature and diversified local economy, then the income will circulate repeatedly before escaping the region. If it does not have broad choices of goods and services, it will escape sooner.

Consider the hypothetical short trail of a dollar earned by a primary job worker at the Nextel call center. Having received her paycheck, she buys construction materials form the local lumber yard, the lumber yard workers buys his health services form the local clinic, the laboratory assistant buys her groceries from the local store, and the stock boy finally winds up with the residual in his pay.

At each step, pieces of the original dollar leech out in taxes or fees to support public services. If used for a local schoolteacher or building inspector, the money keeps circulating. On the other hand, it disappears from our local community if it supports highway construction in eastern Washington or a distant war — though our special relationship with the Navy helps to keep a piece of it here even during wars. Other pieces leech out to insurers, Website providers, or for college debts in other states.

When the remainder does reach the stock boy’s paycheck, assume he orders a set of compact disks from Amazon or a slicer-dicer shown on late night television. In either case, his order will support primary jobs elsewhere in the world, and the local travels of that initial wealth brought into the county by our Nextel employee will have ended.

This could also well be the end of all those secondary jobs depending on fresh money. Fortunately, if Nextel pursues a successful business plan, its employee will continue to bring new dollars into the county with each pay period for years to come. By doing so, she will continue to prime our economic pump and enable swirling wealth to support our secondary jobs.

In a very real and profound sense, the economic welfare of all secondary employers and employees — as well as most of our local public servants and services — depends on this initial infusion of wealth into the county. That’s why the KREDC makes such a fuss about primary jobs and why it makes every effort to keep, grow or recruit primary job businesses to the county. Their jobs are not more valuable than any others, but they clearly are important!

(Editor’s Note: This is the first article of a series on the KREDC.).