We work every day to strengthen the people, programs, partnerships, and policies that help New Yorkers access quality jobs and help employers meet the needs of a changing economy. Our work includes sharing timely information through our weekly newsletter, lifting up leaders and ideas through the NYC Workforce Drop podcast, hosting the city’s annual workforce development conference and other member convenings, and advocating for policies and investments that make workforce development a core part of New York City’s economic future.
Across everything we do, NYCETC is focused on practical solutions that strengthen New York City’s workforce system, including better data, stronger employer partnerships, clearer career pathways, deeper public investment, and real economic mobility for workers, families, communities, and businesses.
Workforce Development Agenda
NYCETC’s Workforce Development Agenda outlines a tangible path to making workforce development central to New York City’s economic strategy. The agenda calls for targeted investment in communities with the greatest need, stronger supports such as childcare and transportation, better hiring and wage data, and accountability structures that help the workforce system deliver stronger outcomes for New Yorkers and employers.
2025 NYCETC Conference — From the Ground Up: Realigning for Mobility and Impact
Watch the recording from The Times Center. Sponsored by Citizens.
Workforce Development Agenda Release & Policy Forum
Watch the recording from The Greene Space.
2024 NYCETC Conference: Setting NYC’s Workforce Agenda – On Practice
Watch the recording from Civic Hall. Co-sponsored by City & State and Citizens.
Current Initiatives
Workforce Benchmarking Network
Led in partnership with the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), the Workforce Benchmarking Network NYC Cohort is a peer learning initiative that helps workforce organizations strengthen data capacity, improve program performance, and track long-term job placement, retention, and wage outcomes. The 2026–2027 cohort includes 17 organizations serving thousands of jobseekers across all five boroughs, with a focus on strengthening economic mobility and closing equity gaps.
Benefits Cliffs Coaching
NYCETC is working with Leap Fund to help workforce organizations better understand and respond to benefits cliffs, the moments when a worker’s increased earnings can put critical public benefits at risk. Through member programming and field learning, NYCETC is helping providers explore tools that support jobseekers and workers as they make informed choices about career growth, income, and financial stability.
NYC Energy Efficiency Workforce Coalition
The NYC Energy Efficiency Workforce Coalition, launched by NYCETC and The Green Launchpad, is an employer-led initiative focused on strengthening career pathways, addressing talent gaps, and advancing equitable growth in New York City’s energy efficiency sector. The coalition brings together contractors, program implementers, workforce partners, and subject-matter experts to help align training with real job opportunities, local occupational tracks, advancement pathways, and employer needs.
Read the NYC Energy Efficiency Workforce Coalition press release.
Past Initiatives
New York City Inclusive Growth Initiative
From 2021-2022, The New York City Inclusive Growth Initiative was a project composed of an 18-person Steering Committee representative of the diversity of New York City. Convened and facilitated by the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development, and Regional Plan Association, this Steering Committee developed the Inclusive Growth Blueprint for the future of economic development, workforce development and affordable housing.
New York Workforce Recovery Strategy Group
During 2020, 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 partnered to form the New York 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. Learn more about the group.
Invest in Skills NY
From 2020 to 2021, Invest In Skills NY was 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. In 2021, the Invest in Skills NY group authored the Follow the Money: Understanding New York City’s Workforce System Funding report.