Governor Hochul’s State of the State reflects an understanding that New York’s economic future depends on aligning education and workforce investments with high-growth industries. The focus on SUNY and CUNY Reconnect, Career Connect, and sectors such as life sciences, healthcare, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing reinforces the recognition that workforce pipelines must be directly connected to real labor-market demand and the jobs driving New York’s economy.
The Governor’s commitment to moving New York toward universal, affordable child care is equally significant. By easing pressure on working families and expanding credentials and micro-credentials for early childhood educators, New York is both enabling greater workforce participation and strengthening the child care workforce itself.
By welcoming employers to the table, as the Governor has championed, the State will be doing exactly what we have long sought to do: serve as a connector—plugging employers into solutions that support workers, strengthen families, and make workforce participation possible.
The Governor’s leadership in confronting wage theft is a critical pillar of a fair workforce system—affirming that work must pay, workers must be protected, and responsible employers should not be undercut by bad actors. Similarly, the Governor’s commitment of an additional $250 million in capital funding to accelerate affordable housing production will have meaningful workforce impacts by reducing turnover and barriers to training and advancement. But those connections remain largely implicit, rather than intentionally designed, measured, and leveraged as part of a comprehensive workforce strategy.
The absence of a clear, worker-centered workforce strategy is striking. While the State frames job creation and credential attainment as economic tactics, it does not center wage growth, job quality, or career advancement as explicit policy goals. The State’s approach remains rooted in an assumption that training and job placement will, downstream, lead to stability and mobility. But affordability pressures and wage stagnation make that assumption incredibly fragile.
Workforce policy remains largely a supply-side exercise, focused on preparing workers for available jobs rather than shaping labor markets. Worker protections and job quality standards are treated as enforcement issues, disconnected from economic development and workforce investments, missing the opportunity to reward high-road employers and set clear expectations for job quality.
While the Governor’s agenda aligns conceptually with system-building, it lacks clear follow-through. There is limited visibility into sustained investments in data infrastructure, the Office of Strategic Workforce Development’s grantmaking, or the operational capacity needed to support Workforce Pell and new work requirements at scale. And while affordability is addressed across multiple policy areas, the framework stops short of confronting benefits cliffs, expanding wraparound supports, or stabilizing the human services workforce that underpins many of the State’s priorities.
New York has a rare opportunity and a responsibility to lead as one Empire State, aligning State and City leadership around a shared vision of prosperity in an economy shaped by rapid technological and demographic change. NYCETC stands ready to work alongside elected officials across the state, philanthropy, labor, higher education, employers, and entrepreneurs to connect upstream and downstream strategies and deliver an economy that works for all New Yorkers in 2026.