There is no such thing as a bad job.

Now, I don’t mean that from the perspective of the employee. There are plenty of bad jobs from that perspective and plenty of lousy bosses, too. I’ve had several of them. I’ve probably been one of them.
  
I’m talking about jobs from the perspective of economic development, of statements like “we don’t want just any jobs, we want good, high-paying jobs with excellent benefits.” Often other words like “high-tech,” “clean,” “permanent,” “white-collar,” and others will be thrown in.

For six years I’ve been working at the Kansas statehouse as an amateur lobbyist, and I’ve heard these comments constantly from state and local officials, chambers of commerce, union officials, and others.
  
Six years ago, a statewide business leader and I had an intense debate on this issue. He lectured me on the importance of “primary employers,” such as manufacturers, headquarters of multinational companies, major distributors and the like. His argument was that you can’t have secondary jobs like those in most small businesses unless you attract the primary jobs first.

An official for the railroads told me “if it weren’t for us big businesses, you little businesses wouldn’t even exist.”

Fighting this attitude has become a major objective for me, and there are plenty of chances to fight it.

In the 2008 Kansas legislative session, the Governor introduced a business tax incentives package that would require a minimum $1 million dollar investment or a minimum 20 new jobs to qualify for income tax credits. 

The “Go Topeka” organization, which controls $5 million per year in sales tax revenues for the purpose of economic development, has policies that are so restrictive they eliminate nearly all small businesses from qualifying for funding.  The rules and red tape are so extensive that most small business owners won’t go to the trouble.

In Kansas, fifty-four percent of the private workforce is employed in small businesses. Only a tiny number of those have assets in other states. They pay every kind of tax the state and local governments in Kansas load on them. Their employees live here. They stay here. They spend their money here. They are the overwhelming majority of our community volunteers.

Communities don’t sprout from “primary businesses”, they sprout from secondary businesses or they sprout together.  Farming is a primary business, but farms and grocery stores and blacksmith shops and livery stables and barber shops and eateries and saloons populated areas together, not separately.

A community can exist with only secondary businesses, but it cannot exist with only primary businesses.

In any case, it doesn’t matter whether the chicken or the egg came first.  Target was not going to open a 600-employee distribution center in Herington because there aren’t enough small businesses there to support enough population to provide enough employees. 

At the June TK Magazine Leadership Summit at the Topeka Ramada Inn, Kim Schultz of Field of Greens catering and restaurant said "Without the little people, the big people don't have anywhere to eat lunch."

You go, girl!  And you can add get their hair done, bury their dead, build and maintain their homes, dry clean their clothes, mow their lawns, trim their trees, clean their chimneys, and on and on and on …

From an economic development standpoint, there is no such thing as a bad job. If starter jobs and low-paying jobs are bad, show me a place that has none.  No matter how wealthy the community, someone is doing those “bad jobs” even if they can’t afford to live there.

Small employers become big employers.  Low-paying jobs become better-paying jobs.  People learn stuff while doing those jobs.  They do stuff that the community absolutely must have done.  And small employers don’t leave the community in batches of six hundred jobs at a time. 

When it comes to economic development, there simply is no such thing as a bad job.