An advantage that Fuji and other South Carolina firms have over New York is lower taxes. New Yorkers pay 12.3 cents of every dollar they earn in state and local taxes, compared with 10 cents in South Carolina, according to Economy.com, an economic-consulting firm. That puts New York second in the firm's ranking among states. South Carolina is 30th.

On Economy.com's index on the cost of doing business, South Carolina ranked 29th, almost five percent below the national average, while New York was eighth, 8.5 percent above the norm. Besides taxes, the ranking considers the costs of labor and energy.

New York's labor costs are higher than South Carolina's — 2.5 percent above the national norm, compared with 2.5 percent under the national average for the Palmetto State, according to Economy.com. But 10 states have higher labor costs than the Empire State, including Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

No employer in New York has shed more manufacturing jobs than Kodak. In 1981, the company had more than 60,000 workers in the Rochester area. The total is now about 20,000 ‹ a figure that could go down to between 13,000 to 15,000 after the latest round of announced layoffs are completed. Kodak¹s revenues have plummeted from just over $20 billion in 1992 to about $12.8 billion annually now. (The company has shed some chemical and consumer-products businesses in the past 11 years.)

"We just aren't going to need as many people working in the company in Rochester in the future as we have today," Kodak CEO Daniel Carp told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Editorial Board in the fall after the company announced it was shifting its emphasis from its traditional film business to the already crowded field of digital photography.

The film business has been slipping for two decades, as people have shifted to the digital camera, which uses a computer chip rather than film to capture images. It is easier and cheaper to manipulate those images before they are printed, and the process bypasses film, the product that has sustained Kodak for more than a century.

An exception to the slide of the film business has been the growth of single-use cameras. Consumers have been enthusiastic about buying an inexpensive camera already loaded with film and then returning it to a photofinisher with the film still in it. They get back prints, and the camera goes back to Kodak, Fuji or other manufacturers to be recycled. About 400 million of them were sold last year, with Fuji and Kodak the biggest suppliers.

But the prices Kodak and Fuji could charge for the cameras began to plummet in the face of intense competition in the late 1990s.

"The (profit) margins are getting crushed," said Charles Brown, Kodak's head of global manufacturing. Five years ago, the cameras sold for $10, he said, but now sometimes retail for as little as $3 as cut-rate manufacturers moved into the field.

Starting in 2001, the managers and workers did their best to cut costs to keep the Rochester operation, at a plant on Lee Road in Kodak Park, competitive.

"We were pressed to produce more and more with fewer people," recalled Carmen Zoccali, 27, who worked in the plant for eight years before it closed. "It was hard, but we thought we were making progress.''

To Brown and other Kodak managers, the economics were stark: Labor costs are about one-tenth in China and one-quarter in Mexico of what they are in New York. While labor accounts for only 20 percent to 30 percent of the cost of the camera (materials and distribution are the rest), moving the manufacturing to China would make the cameras more profitable.

Brown said that while global conditions were the major factors in the decision to ax the Rochester jobs, business conditions in New York are far from ideal.

"We get tied up in the court system," he said. "We have a problem with frivolous, class-action lawsuits" in New York.

He cited a need for more "sensible environmental regulations," a reduction in paperwork and filing requirements, and lower taxes to improve the business climate and help lure good workers to the state and keep them.

Kodak has been fined millions of dollars by state and federal agencies for spills, toxic emissions and other environmental problems at Kodak Park in the past decade. Five families are suing the company for $75 million, claiming that emissions from Kodak facilities contributed to their children's developing cancer.

Brown said that emissions at Kodak Park have been cut by nearly 80 percent since 1987 and that the company has taken many voluntary steps to clean the environment.

"We believe our environmental record is a strong one,'' he said.

Fuji has not been cited for any environmental problems since it opened its doors in South Carolina in 1988, a state Environmental Conservation spokesman said.