NEW YORK — Pfizer Inc.'s agreement to buy Wyeth has Main Street in Madison, N.J., toting up potential damage.

The 19,500 firings Pfizer plans after the acquisition may wipe out the 960 jobs at Wyeth's headquarters. Financial industry bankruptcies and buyouts already are pinching the economy of the commuter town 15 miles west of Manhattan. Wyeth, based in Madison since 1993, is the town's second-biggest private employer.

"I hear it all the time from clients — I just lost a job or my husband just lost a job," Jon Elliott, a jeweler in downtown Madison, said after the $68 billion acquisition was announced. "On Main Street, people are crying the blues because we're not getting anyone walking through the doors."

Pfizer will cut 15 percent of the merged drugmakers' 129,500 employees to save $4 billion, Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler said at a news conference announcing the deal this week. That may not be enough, Seamus Fernandez, a Leerink Swann & Co. analyst in Boston, wrote in a note to clients. The purchase will disappoint investors unless Pfizer chops $6 billion by 2013, Fernandez said.

Wyeth and Pfizer haven't determined where jobs will be cut, said Doug Petkus, a spokesman for 149-year-old Wyeth. It employs 47,600 people in more than 17 countries, according to a Web site set up by the companies. In Madison, the only bigger private employer is Danish shipping company A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, said Ray Codey, the borough administrator.

Madison officials will try to persuade Pfizer to keep a presence in town, plugging its access to New York, proximity to airports and electricity rates that are about 30 percent less than elsewhere in northern New Jersey, Codey said. The borough expects to compete for the jobs with nearby Morris Plains and with Philadelphia, where both companies have offices, he said.

On Main Street, merchants already have seen sales wither, said Joe Duffy, owner of Duffy's Deli. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy and Wells Fargo's acquisition of Wachovia Corp. have erased jobs for the bankers, brokers and other financial professionals who live in Madison, Duffy said.

Elliott said his jewelry sales fell by a third in December from a year earlier, and more customers want to sell gold watches, chains and bracelets. Duffy estimated his corporate catering business fell 40 percent last year.

"We had companies that we serviced once or twice a week and now it's once or twice a month," he said. Wyeth would be a "huge" loss, he said.

The deal, scheduled to close in the second half, will end Wyeth's independence as developer of products including Preparation H hemorrhoid treatment, Anacin pain reliever and ChapStick lip balm. Wyeth traces its history to a drug store and research lab that John Wyeth opened in Philadelphia in 1860, according to its Web site.

It was incorporated in 1926 as American Home Products, based in New York. Chief Executive Officer Bernard Poussot, who took the job in January 2008, is among those who will leave, Wyeth and Pfizer said.

Wyeth is Madison's biggest tax and utility payer, pumping $2.1 million into the town's coffers last year, Codey said.

Wyeth's workers sustain Madison retailers, including business-card printers, law offices and sandwich shops, said Maggie Peters, executive director of the Economic Development Corporation in Morris County.

Madison's median household income topped $101,000 in 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, and the average home sold for $750,000, Codey said. The U.S. recession, housing collapse and financial-industry meltdown pushed Morris County's unemployment rate to 5 percent in December from 2.7 percent a year earlier, Peters said.