Lahman: Photonics can fix dismal poverty rates

• Focusing on manufacturing in optics, imaging and photonics can help city's dismal poverty level, which is at rock bottom.
• Area's designation as a manufacturing community opens the door to $1.3 billion in federal funds for industry should help.

The funny thing about rock bottom is you never quite know you're there.

A report published last week by Buffalo Business First found that Rochester ranked as the third poorest city in the country, based on the percentage of families living below the poverty level.

The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 28 percent of families in Rochester live in poverty, more than double the national rate of 11 percent

Our city ranks behind only Detroit (33%) and Cleveland (30%) among major cities in their poverty rate, the publication said. Buffalo (26%) ranks fourth.

There is no solace in the fact that we're not as bad off as Detroit. This is as bad as it gets, folks. This is rock bottom.

You can point your finger at a lot of reasons why things have gotten so bad, including a failed city school district, where graduation rates for black and Hispanic males are among the worst in the nation.

But the root problem has been the deterioration of our manufacturing core. The departure of General Motors and downsizing at Xerox Corp. and Bausch + Lomb have taken their toll. So has the decline of Eastman Kodak Co., which for generations was the cornerstone of our local economy. Today, Kodak has fewer than 2,500 local employees, down from a peak of 60,000 in 1982.

We have replaced some of those jobs, but too few of them are the high paying high tech jobs that those corporate mainstays offered.

That's why the announcement last month that the Rochester region was one of 12 communities nationwide to receive a "manufacturing community" designation is such a big deal. The designation opens the door to $1.3 billion in federal economic development funding available in the coming year. It's a lifeline to a local economy that's drowning.

Locally, the focus will be on precision manufacturing in optics, imaging and photonics — the science of using light to transmit data.

That's a smart bet, for a couple of reasons. One, there's a cluster of experts here at local universities. There are also dozens of local companies working in the field — ranging from large operations like Harris RF Communications, which employs roughly 2,200 local workers, to smaller outfits like Toptica Photonics, which has about a dozen workers at it's U.S. headquarters in Victor.

Perhaps more importantly, the photonics industry is poised for explosive growth. Fiber optics is a key technology in the IT and telecom businesses, and the market for digital imaging applications and flat panel displays is growing exponentially.

The manufacturing community designation is exactly the kind of concerted effort we need to not only create new jobs but to provide better jobs for people who are already working. That's how you lower the poverty rate.

The U.S. Labor Department says nearly half of college grads are overqualified for the jobs they're working, and most of us who live locally know someone who was cast off from Kodak, Xerox or B+L and is struggling to keep their career afloat.

One good indicator of that is the dwindling number of teens who are working. When I was a teenager, I delivered newspapers after school, hawked soft drinks at Silver Stadium and later worked as a busboy at Arena's party house. Today, those jobs are mostly done by adults. It's symptomatic of the downward pressures in the job market that have affected so many locally.

When you're at rock bottom, you don't have time for a ten-year plan. You need immediate help. And while our politicians wrangle over issues like naming yogurt the official state snack and our local Industrial Development Agency shells out tax breaks for strip malls and grocery stores it's refreshing to see some concrete action that could pay immediate dividends.

Sean Lahman's column appears in print on Sundays. Follow him on Twitter @SeanLahman, or reach him at (585) 258-2369.