Employment priority strategies are a new economic and social term with Chinese characteristics. In this paper, employment priority strategies are classified into different phases and stress is put on its corresponding pertinence we universally make use of. With the combination of the low-level, mid-level and high-level income phases and their corresponding development equilibrium traps, to cope with the main task at different phases such as anti-poverty, against inequality, and to achieve full employment and decent work as media, we have to figure out the connotations at different phases and the generating mechanisms of employment priority. The connotation of employment priority could be divided into three phases from low to high levels, such as market-driven employment priority, employment quantity priority, and employment quality priority. In different income phases, the employment priority phases could be matched with those of the low level, the mid-low level, and the mid-high level. But this matching is not absolute. In the new era, China needs to insist on implementing employment priority strategies, and to grasp the connotation change from quantity preference to quality preference, deepening the reform of related areas, so as to further promote the realization of high quality and full employment.