What Are Primary Employers?

For lack of a better word, primary employers are the industry of a community, although service companies can be primary as well as manufacturers.  Primary employers are those companies that sell the majority of their goods and services outside the Boulder County region.  They represent the foundation of our local economic base because they bring new money into the local economy.  And because their markets are national and international, they require highly educated and highly skilled labor.  To recruit this talent pool, companies offer high wages and these wages provide the discretionary income to support local service and retail establishments in the community.  Therefore, a relationship exists between primary and non-primary employers.  Non-primary employers are dependent on the wages that primary employers provide.  For more about what primary employers are, see the PDF document on the sidebar.

In Longmont, primary employers provide more than 11,000 jobs and nearly a $1 billion dollars in wages annually.  In addition, they support the community through their local property and use taxes, their charitable giving and volunteer support of their employees.