Syracuse (WSYR-TV) – Good-paying jobs are hard to come by, and in New York, they are even harder to find right now.
According to Forbes Magazine, Syracuse ranks second nationwide when it comes to pay cuts over the past year -- and the top five cities were all in New York State.
Rochester came in first; wages there dipped by 2.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 through the first quarter of 2009. Then comes Syracuse; wages here dropped by 2.2 percent.
Albany came in third, followed by New York City and Poughkeepsie.
“New York State is heavy in health and heavy in hospitals, in education. It's heavy in public administration and government employment -- all of those sectors have been sort of flat,” says Syracuse University economics professor Michael Wasylenko.
That, combined with job losses and less overtime, makes wages drop. Wasylenko believes Syracuse ranked second on the top ten pay cut list because of its large medical and legal community.
“You have your lawyers, your doctors, high-paid professionals, business is slow, there's not as much legal business so fees drop, wages drop, you have a reduction,” Wasylenko says.
Economists say when Wall Street turns around, wages will turn around too. But they say that kind of recovery will not happen overnight.
Wasylenko says wages may start to rise again in three to six months -- a long stretch of time for New York workers looking to make a decent wage close to home.
Wasylenko says many retirees here have been replaced with lower-wage employees, also adding to our ranking.
Syracuse’s unemployment rate is 7.7 percent, which is better than the national average of 9.4 percent.
