Resilient Rochester Vol. 3

Today I present the third part of a three part post series. The data presented here was part of the print edition of the 28 page Outlook 2008: Resilient Rochester special section in Sunday's D&C.

The Real Estate Outlook reads like a commercial for Nothnagle, but I'll do my best to dig out the key non-agent specific parameters.

• 2007 saw a 13% drop in home sales nationwide
• Genesee region reported a slight decrease of 1.6%
• Rochester's median sale price increased 2.2% in 2007, bucking a nationwide 6% loss

As I was told by my mortgage broker, the Rochester housing market is generally stable since it didn't experience an outsized unsustainable bubble like we are seeing in Las Vegas, Florida, California, and the Capitol Region. I'm encouraged in general that my master plan of selling my suburban condo for a city townhouse will materialize. In fact, my agent is showing our place today at noon and holding it open Sunday from 2-4.

On to the employment figures. A summary of which states that toal wages have risen more slowly than finite employment due to the wage scale of service sector jobs versus the old-economy manufacturing cash cows. Some raw numbers for Monroe County alone (not the six county region). All numbers are inflation adjusted:

Personal Income
1975 - $18.6 billion
2005 - $26.4 billion

Employment
1976 - 279,622
2006 - 379,013

Businesses
1976 - 11,593
2006 - 17,506

Total Wages
1976 - $12.5 billion
2006 - $15.7 billion

As an addendum, almost 70% of business in the metro area are in Monroe County.

Finally, a comparison of some notable regional employers and their workforce figures in 1982 versus 2007. Format: Company - Year (Rank, Employees)

• Eastman Kodak - 1982 (1, 60,406) - 2007 (3, 9,200)
• Wegmans - 1982 (5, 4,950) - 2007 (2, 9,823)
• University of Rochester - 1982 (3, 9,400) - 2007 (1, 18,671)
• Xerox - 1982 (2, 12,532) - 2007 (4, 7,660)
• Bausch & Lomb - 1982 (6, 3,500) - 2007 (13T, 1,650)
• Harris RF Communications - 1982 (20, 1,000) - 2007 (10, 2,200)

Notable is the number of health care companies on the 2007 Top 20, but not the 1982 version. These include ViaHealth, Unity Health System, Lifetime Healthcare (Excellus Blue Cross/Blue Shield), and Finger Lakes Health.

This brings to a conclusion my condensed reports on Outlook 2008. Coming soon on the blog in addition to the promised case study is a look at the Atlantic Monthly's March 2008 edition, home of a feature by Brookings member Christopher Leinberger.