What We Do

New York City Employment and Training Coalition is the largest city-based workforce development association in the country with over 220 members providing jobs for more than 600,000 New Yorkers. Our mission is to ensure that every New Yorker has access to the skills, training, and education needed to thrive in the local economy, and that every business is able to maintain a highly skilled workforce. NYCETC convenes stakeholders across the system, discovers and develops innovative solutions to create an interconnected and effective workforce, and advocates for equitable workforce development policies and investments at all levels of government that support people, communities and systems.

Our Approach

Convene

NYCETC brings together New York City’s community of talent development organizations, colleges and universities, labor unions, and businesses to understand our collective training and talent needs.

Through conducting research, issuing surveys, hosting panel discussions and roundtables, and more, NYCETC maintains a pulse on how the workforce development community is thinking at large, keeping track of its successes, challenges, and opportunities to improve.

With this shared focus on strengthening New York City’s workforce development community, NYCETC actively fosters cross-collaboration among various nonprofits, educational institutions, unions and businesses to create more inclusive economic outcomes.

Innovate

NYCETC works to discover new and innovative ways to create a truly interconnected talent development system that meets 21st Century talent needs.

Through strategic partnerships, driving new programs, and publishing original research and policy recommendations, NYCETC frequently provides new insights and solutions to build an economy that works for everyone.

NYCETC’s members are on the cutting edge when it comes to creating and implementing new methods of program delivery, including remote and digital first learning opportunities, to ensure workforce solutions remain accessible to all, while remaining current with the latest business needs.

Advocate

NYCETC is the voice of NYC’s workforce development community and we are committed to holding our leaders accountable. Our work with elected officials and agencies leads us to advocate for fundamentally shift and align systems, investments and decision making processes that fuel our economy toward a talent-driven economic development model, one which recognizes (workers and) human capital as the primary pillar, creator and source of prosperity and growth within our communities.

People: Invest in improving all New Yorkers’ ability to access economic opportunity through the development, expansion and full funding of effective training models and upskilling programs that connect New Yorkers to essential and growth sectors, as well as prepare them with 21st century skills to navigate the evolution of industries and company work culture

Community: Align and embed local talent development into economic development processes and practices, including projects developed in response to COVID, such as initiatives focused on life sciences, public health, and sustainability and resiliency, as well as Federal stimulus projects to ensure that economic development creates jobs for local residents

System: Design an intentional system that includes education, job training and employment services, economic development and the NYC Workforce Investment Board to increase the visibility, access, alignment, volume and quality of services

Council Member Amanda Farías (D-18) speaking at an NYCETC rally at City Hall.
Council Member Amanda Farías (D-18) speaking at the #RecoveryForAll rally at City Hall, 2022.

Policy Vision

New York City’s workforce development system exists to maintain the city’s presence as the most competitive and vibrant economy in the world by one, uplifting every New Yorker and addressing income inequality through 21st century skills development and equal access living wage careers; and two, meeting the dynamic talent needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large employers across sustained employment and projected growth industries.

Reckoning with a pandemic and historic inequity
The health and economic decimation from the Covid-19 pandemic continues to hit those of us that have historically and systemically always been hit, fostering an ongoing economic recession and more-than-double-the-national-average unemployment rate. Coupled with deepening inequity issues, the long-term disinvestment in infrastructure and our communities, and mounting consequences of the climate crisis, these issues have reached emergency thresholds for marginalized communities due to political inaction and exclusion from resources and decision-making tables.

Talent development for an equitable and inclusive recovery
The new Mayoral administration and City Council represent a unique opportunity – one that can begin the process for an equitable economic recovery for our city that is long overdue. Given Mayor Eric Adams’ long standing relationship with both the New York City business community and its people, as well as a historically diverse City Council, the city has the ability to springboard towards an inclusive economic recovery by prioritizing a talent-centric inclusive growth model, in tandem with traditional approaches that solely consider labor-market demands and capital infrastructure. This framework recognizes and empowers human capital – working and enterprising New Yorkers across the five boroughs – as the primary pillar and source of prosperity and growth within our communities and among our businesses. For this to happen, talent is required from all over our city.

2022 Policy Priorities

1 | People

  • Commit $250 million to launching an extensive re-employment program supported with wage subsidies and training aligned to essential and growth sectors* – including healthcare and life sciences, tech, clean energy and sustainability, retail and hospitality – to support the millions of New Yorkers who remain unemployed, the businesses that continue to struggle to hire, and the growing sectors that are developing in the pandemic
  • Commit $100 million annually in new funding toward talent development programs to one, increase the scale of effective on-ramps to skills training such as “bridge programs,” pre-apprenticeship models & ESOL programs and two, grow employment and training programs that create pathways into middle skills careers and meet the needs of business across in-demand industries including tech, healthcare, life sciences, media and entertainment, and green jobs
  • Develop a robust CUNY talent pipeline that strengthens the pipeline of local residents served by human services organizations into CUNY for New Yorkers who choose to pursue employer supported credentials and degrees
  • Invest in 360 degree wraparound services – including childcare, internet and computer access, transportation, food security, mental health and financial empowerment – that empower, provide security, and increase the ability to learn and earn
  • Reinforce policies that increase and/or strengthen worker protections and job quality, including wage theft enforcement, index minimum wage, and worker safety nets and support human service providers’ capacity to support these practices

*Key Priority

2 | Community

  • Create a permanent Workforce Development Fund* that provides sustainable, long-term funding for employment and training programs across all agencies and initiatives made up of dedicated investments from a. subsidies enacted through city and state economic development corporations and b. the city’s employer community
  • Expand the City’s pool of federal recovery dollars to invest in making the important structural and organizational changes to New York’s workforce development system that are necessary to upskilling and employing the millions of New Yorkers who remain unemployed
  • Pass Community Hiring legislation to ensure that the City leverages its economic power and prioritizes its investments in communities that are historically marginalized and hardest hit by the health & economic toll of Covid-19
  • Close the digital poverty gap for workers and learners seeking workforce development services by expanding broadband access, providing devices to program participants and households with students, and providing technical assistance to workforce service providers and small businesses

*Key Priority

3 | System

  • Realign the City’s workforce system* to coordinate and manage investments, programming, outcomes measurement and communication across the entire system, working in partnership with service providers on system-wide outcomes, priorities, strategies, investments and policies by: a. Assigning and empowering a Senior Leader Liaison at each agency, department or office with a workforce priority b. Restructuring of the NYC Workforce Development Board to become a coordination and decision making vehicle for what agencies do, what employers want, and how service providers directly integrate into program design and delivery
  • Streamline New York City’s workforce development program investments into two main program buckets: 1) early employment training programs and 2) career pathways training programs so that New Yorkers can easily identify and move into programs that meet their employment goals, and service providers can collaborate to align strategies, standardize outcomes and performance metrics, and provide a continuum of services
  • Create clear and robust goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that align to a shared city-wide workforce agenda, and are used to measure outcomes for clients and provide oversight and accountability of leadership and agencies across the workforce development system
  • Create a new Committee on Workforce Development within the NYC Council to provide oversight of the Deputy Mayor and City agencies
  • Create a worker facing tool to map the workforce development system to increase effectiveness & access to services, connect jobseekers quality and local training programs, and connect graduates to 21st century career opportunities
  • Address barriers that prevent system success, such as contracts that do not provide flexibility and funding for innovation, design, professional development, capacity building and other resources; connections and supports for small businesses and entrepreneurship; and collaboration among all stakeholders

*Key Priority

Campaigns

NYC Inclusive Growth Initiative

The goal of the NYCIGI is to develop a steering committee that is representative of the diversity of New York City in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, immigration history and status, incomes status, thought and disability. It will be proactively inclusive of people with non-traditional educations, people who do not have access to other networks of civic influence in New York City, and people with working-class backgrounds and occupations.

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NY Workforce Recovery Strategy Group

In direct response to the growing crisis of unemployment and small business collapse in New York City as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis, leaders from the public and private sector have partnered to form the “NY Workforce Recovery Strategy Group” and create space for a solutions-oriented discussion to the current economic challenges. The NYC Employment and Training Coalition organized the formation of this group.

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Invest in Skills NYC

Invest In Skills NY is a statewide advocacy partnership between employers, economic development and workforce development communities to urge the Governor and New York State Legislature to prioritize a skilled workforce as an economic necessity. Funded by the New York Community Trust, the NYC Workforce Funders and the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation, this effort aims to raise the collective knowledge about workforce development as economic development and encourage policy reforms to meet the changing demands of the labor market.