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Rochester Native, here, have lived here for 43 years.
Likes: The Commute. You can be from one end of the city to the other in 20 minutes. Very easy commute.
Summers here are beautiful. Finger Lakes. Lake Ontario (we are boaters). School systems. Low housing costs. Great food/restaurants. Arts and Entertainment. In the summer, there are great festivals and concerts every weekend. Walking Trails, great camping around Rochester, the Naples Valley. Safe Suburbs. Niagara Falls is close by. Very decent airfare rates out of Roch or Buff compared to what some of our friends pay in other areas. Wineries. Excellent Healthcare facilities and hospitals.
Dislikes: Property TAXES. Snow. A non existent downtown. Snow. The port of Rochester, which has so much potential, but lies in waste. The lack of decent jobs at the moment.
Dislikes: Property TAXES. Snow. A non existent downtown. Snow. The port of Rochester, which has so much potential, but lies in waste. The lack of decent jobs at the moment.
Now now, we have Park Ave, East Ave, Alexander St, Monroe Ave. Apparently they all count as "downtown" so that part of your statement is false
Now now, we have Park Ave, East Ave, Alexander St, Monroe Ave. Apparently they all count as "downtown" so that part of your statement is false
All great areas, especially Park and East, but not the "downtown" like I used to know it. East End is fun, too, and the Party in the Park concerts in the summer, the new bars near Andrews/St. Paul are fun too, but for a city the size of Rochester, we should have a better downtown infrastructure. High Falls had an OK thing going, but that didn't last either.
Port of Rochester is not nearly as much of an "unused potential" issue as the high falls area. I've said it before and I'll say it again...how many mid-sized US cities have TWO waterfalls right in the middle of them? One, us. But do we take advantage of it? Nope. If only we could have told good ole' Nathanial Rochester 200 years ago that he should found the village of Rochesterville just a little further to the north; it would be our CBD that would be bisected by High Falls instead of a gritty industrial/low income area.
that's one thing I've never understood about Rochester job market. Now, I live in SoCal so we're told we get paid some "sunshine dollars" which I can understand to some degree, but it is very expensive here so they can only justify that so far.
But you'd think that the less desirable a place to live (including places like Rochester), the salaries would be higher to get good people and keep them. Sorry, don't mean to insult anyone to lives there, but the fact is that western NY state is not among the most desirable places to live, at least it is perceived not to be. I mean, there are plenty of places that have long winters but yet attract people to jobs and pay them well (Boston area for example). I wanted to move back a few times but it made no sense to cut my salary in half.
It all comes down to supply and demand. There are plenty of highly qualified people willing to work for lower salaries than they would receive in another location because they want to stay in the area and not have to move. They have family and friends in the area and their children are entrenched in the schools with their friends and activities. I recently went through a job cut at a local Rochester company that transferred our whole division out of state. The classes at the outplacement service were full of highly qualified middle-aged people that are desperate to stay in the area, even if they have to settle for lower wages. So employers have their pick and don't have to pay the higher wages (except in some harder to fill technical specialties where they really want younger, more recently educated persons).
It all comes down to supply and demand. There are plenty of highly qualified people willing to work for lower salaries than they would receive in another location because they want to stay in the area and not have to move. They have family and friends in the area and their children are entrenched in the schools with their friends and activities. I recently went through a job cut at a local Rochester company that transferred our whole division out of state. The classes at the outplacement service were full of highly qualified middle-aged people that are desperate to stay in the area, even if they have to settle for lower wages. So employers have their pick and don't have to pay the higher wages (except in some harder to fill technical specialties where they really want younger, more recently educated persons).
Unfortunately, it's the same reason that my husband and I recently moved out of Rochester. After looking for over a year, there was not much available and the jobs that I was finding were offering less than half of my current salary. It was depressing and insulting. And they had plenty of qualified people willing to work for those low wages.
OK but that's only one-half of the supply and demand equation. What the economics textbooks say is that more entrepreneurs should be attracted to the area because of the relatively low cost of labor and in that way raise wages through competition for the best workers. In other words, cheap skilled labor should attract capital just as abundant capital attracts labor.
Whatever is stopping this process from occurring is the real culprit here, be it taxes, other anti-business state or local policies or perhaps other factors beyond the state's control.
OK but that's only one-half of the supply and demand equation. What the economics textbooks say is that more entrepreneurs should be attracted to the area because of the relatively low cost of labor and in that way raise wages through competition for the best workers. In other words, cheap skilled labor should attract capital just as abundant capital attracts labor.
Whatever is stopping this process from occurring is the real culprit here, be it taxes, other anti-business state or local policies or perhaps other factors beyond the state's control.
Exactly......I'd say that it is the tax climate in regards to businesses.
OK but that's only one-half of the supply and demand equation. What the economics textbooks say is that more entrepreneurs should be attracted to the area because of the relatively low cost of labor and in that way raise wages through competition for the best workers. In other words, cheap skilled labor should attract capital just as abundant capital attracts labor.
Whatever is stopping this process from occurring is the real culprit here, be it taxes, other anti-business state or local policies or perhaps other factors beyond the state's control.
But this is simply not happening and I don't think will ever happen due to cost of doing business in NYS ... and it's just not one factor, it's a complexity of many as you mention. Unfortunately, I don't seeing this changing in my working lifetime. It's been talked about for as long as I can remember and as far as I see, the situation is just becoming worse.
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