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I’ve lived in Rochester, New York, for 72 years, and I’ve watched it fade from a bustling hub to a shadow of itself. Once, Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb employed tens of thousands, offering steady wages—$60,000-$70,000 a year in today’s dollars—without a college degree. Families thrived; the middle class anchored neighborhoods like Maplewood and Charlotte. Today, those factories sit silent or scaled back. Since 1990, Rochester’s lost over 50,000 manufacturing jobs, its poverty rate has climbed to 30%, and violent crime—19.8 incidents per 1,000 residents in 2023—outpaces national averages by fourfold (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2023). Drive through, and you see it: boarded-up plants, kids on corners, a city priced out of the global market it once dominated.
Labor costs are part of it—U.S. workers earn $30 an hour versus $3-$5 in Mexico or $2-$4 in Vietnam (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024)—and consumers like me chase $20 toasters over $50 local ones. But New York State heaps on pain: a 7.25% corporate tax (plus local levies), a $15 minimum wage (rising to $16.50 by 2026), and a regulatory thicket—environmental reviews, permitting delays—that stalls new factories. Kodak didn’t just lose to digital cameras; it lost to cheaper shores and a state that didn’t adapt. Sure, not every job fled because of taxes—some, like film photography, died when technology moved on—but policy made staying here harder than it had to be.
The Thruway’s Hollowed Spine
Rochester’s not alone. Drive the New York State Thruway—Buffalo to Schenectady—and it’s a graveyard of the Empire State’s glory. Buffalo’s steel mills, once employing 40,000, now limp along with a few thousand jobs. Syracuse lost Carrier to Mexico; Utica’s textile plants faded decades ago. Statewide, manufacturing jobs dropped from 1.1 million in 1990 to 440,000 in 2023—a 60% plunge (BLS, 2023). Poverty stalks these cities: 28% in Buffalo, 31% in Syracuse (U.S. Census, 2023). Crime follows: Buffalo’s murder rate triples the U.S. average; Rochester’s car thefts soared 70% since 2020. The Thruway mirrors a national loss—7 million manufacturing jobs gone since the late 1990s (Economic Policy Institute, 2024)—and New York’s high taxes and regs (49th in regulatory freedom, Mercatus Center, 2023) speed the decline.
New York State and the National Mirror
New York’s fall reflects America’s industrial erosion. Once the Empire State, with 25% of its workforce in manufacturing in 1980, it’s now at 6% (BLS, 2023), trailing a nation hollowed out by globalization—China’s WTO entry, NAFTA, and cheap labor abroad. The U.S. middle class, like Rochester’s, has shrunk, with median incomes stagnating ($74,000 nationally, $40,000 in Rochester; Census, 2023) as costs rise. New York’s woes—high taxes, overregulation, job flight—could engulf the country.
Trump’s tariffs -10 % on 180+ countries, up to 104% on some goods, launched in April—aim to reverse that, pushing firms to build here for our market, with our workers. It’s a bold bet: short-term pain (Wall Street’s 5% S&P drop, April 3, 2025) for long-term gain. First-term tariffs added 3,200 steel jobs (EPI, 2020); a 2024 White House study projects a $728 billion boost and 2.8 million jobs. Critics—Democrats and economists like Joseph Stiglitz—warn of inflation ($2,500-$5,200 per household, Center for American Progress, 2025) and retaliation. Fair points: Higher prices hit hard, and trade wars could backfire. But doing nothing’s a choice too—and it’s left us with empty factories.
Governments Must Clear the Road
Tariffs need help to work. New York’s a cautionary tale: Taxes topping 10% with local add-ons, high Real Estate taxes, and suffocating regulations drive firms to Tennessee (Nissan) or Georgia (Kia), where jobs grew while New York’s tanked. Cut the corporate rate to 5%, shrink permitting from 18 months to 6, and Rochester could snag a chipmaker. Red states show it works. Albany’s tied to $100 billion in tax revenue (NYS Budget, 2024)—slashing it’s tough, but clinging to the status quo keeps us a has-been.
Federally, it’s crunch time. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts—corporate rate to 21%, small business relief—expire in January 2026. If Congress doesn’t extend them, rates jump to 39.6%, deductions vanish, and investment stalls (Tax Foundation, 2024). New York’s high-tax trap goes national—firms bolt overseas, not to Buffalo or Rochester. Pair tariffs with a permanent 15% rate, halve regs, add reshoring credits, and U.S. labor competes. Automation’s a wrinkle—robots, not just regs, stole some jobs—but tax hikes won’t fix that. Without action, America’s Thruway spreads coast to coast.
Crime, Education, and the Jobs Lifeline
Rochester’s decline isn’t just economic—it’s social. Where factories stood, crime festers. Kids see no future: high school graduation rates limp at 65% (vs. 87% nationally; NYSED, 2023), with dropouts highest in job-scarred spots like the Crescent. Past generations had Kodak or GM—$60,000-a-year gigs that kept families whole and teens in school. Now, with median incomes at $26,000 in Rochester’s poorest ZIPs (Census, 2023), kids drift. Each 1% manufacturing drop lifts crime 0.2% (NBER, 2019); Rochester’s juvenile arrests, 60% gang-related in 2024, prove it (Rochester PD, 2024). No jobs, no hope—crime’s the fallback.
Education’s hit too. Why grind for a $15-an-hour gig when dealing pays $200 a day? A 10% blue-collar job loss doubles youth disengagement—skipping class, dropping out, joining gangs (Urban Institute, 2022). The Thruway’s the same: Buffalo’s at 76%, Syracuse 70% (NYSED, 2023). Manufacturing’s fall killed purpose, not just paychecks—nationally, 7 million lost jobs could mean millions more kids lost. Unions pushed wages up, sure, but globalization and automation hit harder. Tariffs and tax cuts could revive factories—500 jobs at $50,000 a year in Rochester or Utica might steady families, guide teens, cut crime 5% (Journal of Labor Economics, 2018). New York and the feds must act—or the Thruway’s fate goes national.
Conclusion: The Empire Strikes Back—or Fades Away
Rochester’s shuttered factories and rising crime aren’t just a local tragedy—they’re a national alarm. The Thruway’s ghost towns, from Buffalo to Schenectady, scream what’s at stake: a middle class gutted, kids lost to gangs, a state—and country—priced out of its own future. Trump’s tariffs aim to flip the script, luring factories back to build for Americans, by Americans. But tariffs alone are a shot in the dark—New York’s sky-high taxes and red tape could choke the revival, sending jobs to red states while the Empire State rots. The feds can’t sit idle either; without slashing regs and taxes, we’ll stay a nation of cheap imports and broken dreams.
This isn’t just about jobs. It’s about kids in Rochester dropping out because school leads nowhere, about crime spiking as hope fades. Bring back manufacturing—cut the roadblocks—and you rebuild lives: $50,000-a-year workers lift families, teens see a path, streets quiet down. Ignore it, and the Thruway’s fate spreads nationwide—a hollowed-out America, coast to coast. New York was the Empire State once; it can be again. So can the U.S. But it’s now or never—clear the way, or kiss the middle class goodbye. I don’t know if Trump’s tariffs will bring jobs back, but at least he has a plan. I’ve suggested my plan here. What’s your plan?
Mark Gianniny
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
Mark,
I believe we do agree on quite a bit. My bottom line is their needs to be a smarter regulatory framework for corporations. Corporations were once considered to have an equal obligation to shareholders, consumers, and their workers. That began to change in the 1970s with the Lewis Powell Memo and the Boys from Chicago, then taken to the extreme of shareholders only by guys like Jack Welch of GE. It is not just government subsidies. Taxpayers/consumers spend much in taxes for new infrastructure and education for the additional population when a large employer comes to town. The cheapest labor and regulatory costs offshore were the extreme. China did not put a gun to anyone’s head. Our 0ne percent, bankers, and corporations put their greed above all. It did not start with trade agreements. When I was young Rochester was the third largest manufacturer of clothing and accessories in the country. In the 1970s they began going to the non-union minimum wage South, see ” Norma Rae “. GM wiping out most of the middle class and impoverishing Flint, ” Buick City, happened several years before NAFTA. There are many ways for claw backs to communities to minimize destroying entire local economies. There was a time we believed as a country we could conquer any problem with the Best and the Brightest working with Labor and communities. Real solutions that are fair and reasonable for all will not come from the greediest one percent who have seized control of government. In my view the first step must be restoring political power to the people. The super rich have shown they are not champions of Democracy.
James,
Thank you again for your thoughtful response. I believe we agree on more than we disagree.
I agree that corporations have responsibilities beyond maximizing shareholder returns. Businesses thrive best when workers prosper, consumers are treated fairly, and communities benefit from growth. I also agree that when large employers leave a city, the costs are often borne by the community through lost jobs, declining tax bases and weakened neighborhoods.
You are correct that Rochester’s decline did not begin with NAFTA or China’s entry into the WTO. The migration of manufacturing to lower-cost regions, including the American South, began decades earlier. In many ways, globalization accelerated trends that were already underway.
Where I think our discussion becomes most important is not in diagnosing the past but in designing the future.
The question before Rochester and many American cities is this: How do we create broad prosperity and middle-class opportunity in the 21st century?
I suspect we both agree that an economy that concentrates too much wealth at the top is neither healthy nor sustainable. But I would also argue that wealth cannot be distributed if it is not first created. Communities need employers, investment, entrepreneurship and jobs that provide dignity and upward mobility.
Perhaps the answer lies not in choosing between business and labor, but in rebuilding the partnership that once existed among workers, businesses, universities and government. Rochester flourished when those institutions worked together.
Our challenge today is to create a modern version of that partnership. We may disagree on some of the causes of our decline, but I suspect we share the same goal: a stronger middle class, vibrant neighborhoods and greater opportunity for the next generation.
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
Much of this is accurate, but other important factors are excluded, and some are wrong. Actual corporate taxes paid were nowhere near 39% before Trump. Musk, Amazon and oil and gas and more paid almost nothing, and in their worst years paid less tax than their CEO salaries. There is no move to stop greedflation, which was about 50% of the post Covid inflation. Many CEOs admitted as much under oath in Congressional Hearings. Prior to Nixon corporate taxes were reduced on profits by expanding and hiring. Every dollar spent on wages, benefits, infrastructure, R&D and more was taken off profits to lower taxes paid. Spending billions of profits on stock buy backs was illegal and did not reduce tax liability. The return of jobs in manufacturing will not build a significantly larger middle class. That has only happened with 25% or higher union density and strong unions. Trump is destroying unions and worker rights as I write. Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan have two to three times our union density and most pay higher wages and better benefits. Trump wants to penalize them because they do not have for profit health care, at twice the cost per person, on their exports. If the price of a comparable foreign vehicle goes up $4,000, American CEOs will raise their prices $3,000 and make billions more. Without regulation the lack of competition will enrich mainly the top, see Smoot-Hawley. See also white flight and redlining, destroying the investment in a home, the biggest asset most workers have. Blacks were condemned to stay in the poorest neighborhoods as the tax base crumbled and the schools went down. As recently as a decade ago M&T Bank pleaded nolo contender to redlining and paid a million dollar fine. We are not global victims as Trump claims. The global system was designed by American corporations, bankers, and the politicians they own on both sides of the aisle. See neo-liberals. Updated figures only from REPORTED wealth on tax forms shows it is a $70 trillion transfer of wealth since the late seventies from 90% of Americans to the richest 10%, with the one percent grabbing the biggest share. Most of that wealth would have been subject to Social Security taxes and at least another $3 trillion in SS. Entire books have been written about what you exclude. See Joel Stiglitz, once on the world economic forum and a Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Too much to be addressed here.
James,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. We probably agree on more than it appears.
I agree that globalization was not some natural disaster that happened to America. It was largely designed and encouraged by corporate leaders, policymakers, and consumers seeking lower costs. I also agree that corporate tax rates and effective tax rates are not the same thing. Many large corporations have historically paid far less than the statutory rate through deductions, credits, and international tax strategies.
Where we differ is on the question of what primarily created Rochester’s decline.
You point to wealth concentration, declining union power, redlining, and corporate behavior. Those factors certainly played roles. But I would argue that none of them explain why Rochester lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs while cities and states with lower costs and more business-friendly environments gained them.
Even if we accepted every point you make about unions, wealth inequality, and corporate taxes, we would still be left with a basic economic reality: employers can only pay middle-class wages if the jobs exist in the first place.
Kodak once employed more than 60,000 people locally. Xerox employed tens of thousands. Those jobs supported entire neighborhoods. Today they are gone. The social consequences are visible in labor force participation, family formation, educational outcomes, and crime.
You are absolutely right that strong unions helped build the American middle class. The question is whether unions can revive a middle class without a robust industrial base underneath them. Europe’s union density remains higher than ours, but even Europe is now struggling with industrial competitiveness, high energy costs, and manufacturing losses to Asia.
I would also suggest that we should not view manufacturing and worker protections as opposing ideas. Germany, for example, has long combined industrial strength with strong labor representation. The challenge is creating an environment where investment occurs in the first place.
The question I keep coming back to is this:
If tariffs, tax incentives, workforce development, and regulatory reform are not the answer, what is the practical path to rebuilding a broad middle class in places like Rochester?
That is the discussion I hoped the article would start.
Mark-how are you feeling the pain? This is all conceptual. I believe you are an affluent property owner and a member of the privileged class in Rochester. Talking about Federal policies dismisses the poor governance and systems in place in NY State and Rochester. And, I dare suggest that developers and other big donors are complicitous.
What do you suggest we need to do in Rochester to make our neighbors who don’t enjoy the comforts we do? I try to put up…therefore, I don’t shut up.
Let’s get stuff done!
Richard,
Fair question.
You’re right that I have not personally experienced the economic hardship facing many Rochester families. I have been fortunate. But I don’t think a person has to be poor to care about poverty, just as one doesn’t have to be sick to care about healthcare.
My concern comes from watching the city change over seven decades.
When I was growing up, there were multiple paths into the middle class. A young person could graduate from high school, go to work at Kodak, Xerox, Delco, or Bausch & Lomb, buy a home, raise a family, and build a future. Those pathways have largely disappeared.
As for practical solutions, I would start with three.
First, improve educational outcomes by focusing relentlessly on literacy, numeracy, attendance, and workforce readiness.
Second, make Rochester and New York more attractive for investment by reducing permitting delays, simplifying regulations, and lowering the cost of doing business.
Third, aggressively recruit industries that create middle-income jobs for people who may not have four-year degrees. Advanced manufacturing, skilled trades, logistics, healthcare technology, and construction all offer opportunities.
I don’t pretend these steps solve everything. But I believe jobs, education, and public safety reinforce one another. When people see opportunity, communities become more stable.
My article was less about politics and more about asking how we recreate ladders of opportunity for the next generation.
I welcome additional ideas because this challenge is bigger than any one ideology.
Not sure this is a plan but certainly a solution approach: Make Monroe County’s priority to educate our City schools children! Have County Executive Bello sign an ‘executive order’ taking over the City Schools District. Fire the Teachers, Administrators and Schools Board. Start totally over! Engage and enable the Charter Schools leaders, Bob Duffy, Danny Wegman, Hillside Work Scholarship Connection and others to Educate the City Schools children. It can be done! With the 26,000 (+/-) students focused on learning we will have an educated workforce force! An educated community! Educate students early on jobs ( manufacturing, construction, marketing, computer skills, police, fire, etc) and secondary education ( college, trade schools, entrepreneurship, etc..). Our City School students need to see the potential of a bright future in 5th grade thru 12th!
So that’s what I got!
Do you have any solutions that can be realistically implemented? Something that makes a dent rather than deliver a peace, love, and understanding for all of humanity?
Howie,
Thank you for your comments. I agree with much of what you wrote, especially the importance of exposing young people to career opportunities long before they graduate.
I have long believed that many students disengage because they cannot see a clear connection between what they are learning today and what their future might look like tomorrow. Helping students understand the pathways available to them, whether through college, trade schools, apprenticeships, entrepreneurship, healthcare, construction, public service, or manufacturing, is essential.
Where I would add to your point is that education and jobs must work together. We can improve schools, graduation rates, and workforce training, but if there are not enough good-paying jobs waiting on the other side, we will still struggle to retain talent and rebuild communities.
When Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Delco, and other employers were thriving, students could see a future for themselves right here in Rochester. Those opportunities helped create stable families, strong neighborhoods, and a large middle class.
I believe Rochester needs both educational reform and economic development. We need schools that prepare students for success, and we need employers that provide opportunities worth preparing for.
In the end, our goal is the same: giving young people a reason to believe their future can be brighter than their present.
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
You have been drinking the Republican kool-aid. Tariffs are taxes. On us. They reduce our earning power, and shift the taxation ability to the executive branch instead of the congress where it belongs. When your iPhone which cannot possibly be produced in the US – ask Apple the CEO says it literally can not – goes up 104% in cost let me know how that’s an advantage for you. There are also things other than manufacturing we buy overseas. Do you like strawberries in winter? Forget about them. Do you enjoy out of season vegetables? Forget about them too. They are all grown in other countries. Do you like all the electronics that require rare earth metals we don’t have here? China just said they’re going to completely restrict trade in those. Good luck making something electronic without them.
Tariffs cause all sorts of bad side effects. While you are concentrating on raising money from us by excess tariff taxes, those other countries are making other deals (while at the same time telling Trump to pound salt). The US has become persona non grata with EVERY country including allies and partners like Canada. Which means…. they’re all doing deals with China and each other instead of us. Which will vastly DECREASE exports. While we may decrease imports, decreasing exports at the same time is a no-win.
And if you think the added inflation from tariffs will eventually go down – you’re also dreaming. Making the same thing in the US costs more than making it overseas – so the inflation created is permanent, not temporary until “manufacturing can be brought home”. You know how long it takes to make (for instance) a chip fab? 3-5 years.
All that this tariff nonsense has done is to start a trade war with the ENTIRE WORLD. You know how many people and consumers are in the US? About 350 million. There is a customer base of 8.2 billion out there in the world. We make up 4.22% of the entire world’s population. They don’t need us.
Lee,
I appreciate the response because you’ve identified the biggest risk of tariffs.
You’re absolutely right that tariffs function as taxes and that consumers ultimately bear at least part of the cost. You’re also right that modern supply chains cannot be rebuilt overnight. No serious person should pretend otherwise.
The question is whether the current system is sustainable.
Over the last several decades, Americans benefited from lower prices, but we also lost millions of manufacturing jobs and became increasingly dependent on foreign countries for critical goods, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, rare earth materials, and industrial components.
The issue is not whether free trade creates benefits. It clearly does.
The issue is whether a nation can remain economically secure when it no longer produces many of the goods essential to its economy and national defense.
You mentioned Apple. Tim Cook has often noted that China’s advantage is not simply lower wages. It is the depth of its manufacturing ecosystem, supply chains, technical workforce, and infrastructure. That ecosystem did not appear by accident. It was built through decades of deliberate industrial policy.
My concern is that the United States largely abandoned industrial policy while assuming market forces alone would preserve our productive capacity.
You may ultimately be right that tariffs fail. History offers examples that support your caution.
But doing nothing also carries costs. Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and many other cities are living examples of what decades of industrial decline look like.
The real debate is not whether tariffs are painful. The real debate is whether some level of short-term pain is justified if it leads to greater economic resilience and stronger domestic production over the long term.
Reasonable people can disagree on that question. What concerns me most is that many critics of tariffs acknowledge the problem but offer no realistic alternative for rebuilding the industrial base that once supported America’s middle class.