The average debt-ridden household in the United States carries $47,712 in student loan debt, and recently, Wallethub released its 2016 report on cities with the most student debt in the nation. Rochester ranks in the top 3% of cities with the highest student loan debt, the average balance in the city being $32,196.
Exacerbating the situation, the median income for Rochester residents between the ages of 25 and 44 is only $32,947. A recent report from Citizens Bank revealed that college graduates spend nearly 20% of their salaries on paying back student loans, and three in five graduates are expected to be paying college loans into their forties.
Meanwhile, a new study reveals that Rochester has the slowest growing economy in the nation, which is further bad news for residents buried in student loan debt.
Headlight Data, the website that released the report, used information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to compile its rankings. Headlight Data ranked the 53 largest metro areas in the country by employment growth in 2015 and found that Rochester was dead last. Buffalo did not rank much higher at third last.
According to the statistics, Rochester lost 4,700 jobs between February 2015 and 2016. Rochester resident and local business owner John Raimondi says that he is not surprised by the decline. “A lot of those markets that are growing nationally are service-oriented,” he says. “Rochester – and quite frankly upstate New York – we’re pretty heavily focused on the manufacturing sector.”
President of the Empire Center for Public Policy, E.J. McMahon, comments, “Most of upstate New York has been almost completely stagnant for the past five or six years. What we need is a change in the overall state business climate.”
Yet there is hope. State leaders are optimistic that the new photonics project coming to Rochester as well as the economic development initiative will bring in more jobs and help revive the city’s economy.
No Comment