Committee Chairs Virginia Maloney and Julie Won initiated the hearing with questions regarding the current state of the GEAP’s marquee items. Sam Jung, Senior Vice President of Green Economy at the NYC Economic Development Corporation and Doug Lipari, Executive Director of the NYC Office of Talent and Workforce Development provided follow-up testimony from the executive branch. 

The conversation was directly shaped by an NYCETC report that situated the green economy in the current moment and helped inform Council perspectives.

Key Takeaways

• The State of the Green Economy in the Current Administration is Unclear. With no permanent leadership at the New York City Economy Development Corporation (NYCEDC), no stated plans for an updated green economy action plan that factors in the current realities of state and federal climate policies and funding or private investments, including previously planned offshore wind deployments, and few specific green economy items stated in the latest draft budget, the relevance of the 2024 plan remains to be determined.
• Questions Remain on Green Job Growth and Data: According to the Plan, the green economy was anticipated to grow from 130,000 jobs in 2021 to 382,000 jobs by 2040—with 70% of those jobs transitioning from existing, non-green to green jobs (e.g. a banker financing a solar farm rather than an oil pipeline), and 30% of them being net new (e.g. deployment of new technologies like offshore wind). However, only 2,000 green jobs were added to the city in 2023, according to data from the Center for an Urban Future. Estimates on the number of green economy apprenticeships, or green jobs attributable to Community Hiring, key workforce pillars of the plan, were not available.
• Plans for Five-Borough Green Training Centers have Evolved: Another key workforce pillar of the plan, a commitment to develop a green training facility in each borough, has advanced in a different form than was articulated in the 2024 strategy. It currently includes (i) SolarOne’s Environmental Education Center, which opened at Stuyvesant Cove, Manhattan, in 2025; (ii) Fordham University’s Bronx Green Jobs Center, which received $3 million from EDC and will open at East Fordham Road at the end of 2026; (iii) the BATWorks innovation hub, a $100 million investment that is slated to open in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in 2028; and a $10 million investment in CUNY will produce additional sites with (iv) Queensborough Community College and (v) College of Staten Island, with opening dates to be determined.

What Comes Next: Our Take on What It Will Take

NYCETC and many of our partners—including The Green Launchpad, JobsFirstNYC, Consortium for Worker Education, Stacks+Joules, Green City Force, The HOPE Program, Andromeda Community Initiative, Fordham University, Solar One, and SBIDC—provided public testimony amplifying many shared goals for building a green economy in the current moment. These included:

• Seeing workforce not as charity, but as a vital business service that delivers operational outcomes and is embedded into economic growth and justice
• Leveraging the existing activities of stakeholders across the five boroughs, including workforce training nonprofits, industrial businesses, chambers of commerce and business service providers, private and nonprofit real estate
• Increasing transparency on the progress of the GEAP’s implementation and adjusting the strategy in light of market changes, so that even non-governmental stakeholders across the city can understand gaps and contribute to filling them

NYCETC CEO Gregory J. Morris’s testimony focused on (1) centering City government as the anchor employer in the green economy, and (2) having City government model effective workforce practices through a Full-Cycle Model of Green Workforce Development in which agencies themselves provide career exploration, preparation, access, launch, and advancement for New Yorkers, from schools to mid-career. 

NYCETC also submitted a full policy memorandum that includes the following recommendations: 

1. Pilot the Full-Cycle Model of Green Workforce Development in City Government: Direct key agencies (Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Parks and Recreation, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Department of Transportation, and Department of Sanitation) to serve as demonstration agencies by expanding career exposure, strengthening work-based learning opportunities, increasing exam frequency, and creating more transparent pathways into climate-critical civil service titles. If this model can work inside the City’s own famously slow hiring bureaucracy, it becomes the most credible, battle-tested template we have for scaling the private green economy — because it will have been proven on the hardest case first. 

2. Explore The Green Launchpad as a model for New York City’s industry partnership strategy: Convened by NYCETC, the NYC Energy Efficiency Workforce Coalition brings employers, utilities, workforce organizations, and training providers together to define occupations, competencies, career pathways, and hiring needs using a common language. Rather than beginning with available training programs, the Coalition starts with employer demand and aligns workforce investments to meet real hiring needs. As the City refines its industry partnership strategy, The Green Launchpad provides a practical framework that could strengthen employer engagement and inform future partnerships across additional green economy sectors. 

3. Launch Green Economy Career Navigators: Place dedicated navigators in community colleges, Workforce1 centers, and community-based organizations to help New Yorkers understand career options, access training, stack credentials, and connect to employment opportunities in the green economy. 

4. Create a GEAP Accountability Framework: Require the Administration to identify the priority occupations, workforce investments, hiring targets, and performance metrics necessary to achieve the goals of the Green Economy Action Plan. 

5. Establish a Green Economy Workforce Implementation Working Group: Building on the foundation established by the former Green Economy Advisory Council, this body would bring together NYCETC, employers, labor, workforce providers, educational institutions, City agencies, utilities, philanthropy, and the Green Economy Network to ensure the City’s workforce strategy evolves in step with industry needs. Unlike the previous advisory structure, the Working Group should be designed as an active implementation body that ensures that the broader green workforce ecosystem plays a meaningful role in advancing New York City’s green economy.

Watch the Hearing

A recording of the hearing is available on the City Council’s website.

• From 1 hour 53 minutes, watch testimony from Gregory J. Morris, NYCETC; Keri A. Faulhaber, JobsFirstNYC; Angela N. Son, The Green Launchpad; and Dr. Christopher Malone, Consortium for Worker Education.
• From 2 hours 3 minutes, Jonathan Spooner, Stacks+Joules; Sindri Manzanares, Green City Force; Jako Douglas-Borren, The HOPE Program; and Sophia Oliveira Ricci, Andromeda Community Initiative.
• From 2 hours 13 minutes, Travis Proulx, Fordham University; Miquela Craytor, SBIDC; and Stephen Levin, Solar One.

Perhaps the most compelling item on the mayor’s agenda is free universal childcare—an issue where the administration won crucial early support from Governor Hochul to cover the costs of care for thousands of two-year olds in the five boroughs. City leaders continue to plan aggressive expansion of both childcare and afterschool capacity.  

The administration’s hopes rest in large measure on the quantity and quality of the city’s “care economy” workforce: the New Yorkers who work out of childcare centers, neighborhood organizations, home-based family care, and school-run programs. The overwhelming majority of care economy workers are women of color, and many if not most work part-time and/or hold multiple jobs. 

These workers face low pay—in 2023, childcare workers in NYC had median annual income of just $25,000—and adverse conditions. Benefits are rare, as are opportunities to advance within the field, and the emotional demands can be severe. Not surprisingly, turnover is high: by one estimate, the city needs to recruit at least 5,000 new childcare workers each year just to maintain level capacity. 

The consequences of this system are visible well beyond childcare centers and classrooms. For some New Yorkers, full-time work is still not enough to stay housed when the combined cost of housing and care outpaces what their paychecks can reasonably support. Any serious affordability agenda has to recognize childcare as part of that equation.

The care economy is vital economic development infrastructure, even if we don’t reward its workers accordingly. Expanding childcare and after-school programming has clear positive impact on parents’ labor force participation, not to mention tax receipts: a Census Bureau analysis estimates that NYC’s implementation of universal pre-K translated into approximately $93 million in additional annual tax revenue. 

At the same time, the cost of not having affordable, high-quality care continues to rise. The NYC Economic Development Corporation estimates that 375,000 parents left their jobs or reduced their working hours because of a lack of access to childcare during fiscal year 2022, leading to losses of $23 billion in economic output. 

As frustrations around childcare mount, many families are opting to leave the city altogether. A recent Comptroller study notes that between 2020 and 2023, NYC saw an 8.7 percent decrease in the number of households with children, with the biggest drop among families with children ages 4 and under.  

Over the last several months, a series of New York City Council hearings on the administration’s plans for early childcare and afterschool expansion has surfaced some key unresolved questions. For one, it is unclear just how many New Yorkers work in the care economy: the most common estimate is between 33,000 and 40,000 in early childhood education. Given projections that NYC will need to double its current workforce to achieve universal childcare, getting an accurate count of that current workforce seems important—as does having a plan to scale it. 

Just as importantly, the City’s planning should reflect the full continuum of care that working families rely on every day. Childcare does not end when a child starts kindergarten. It also includes the workers and programs that care for school-age children after school, during the summer, and over school breaks, supports that are essential to keeping parents in the workforce.

Investments in the care economy—to expand its reach, raise its quality, and fairly compensate those who work in it—pay off both in terms of economic return and in alignment to community values. Over the long term, New York should consider proposals to create a statewide right to childcare similar to that of children to attend public schools. For now, however, the City should take two steps to sustain its early momentum. 

1. Make a plan to scale NYC’s care economy workforce. To begin, researchers should fully quantify how many New Yorkers hold care economy jobs now, and who they are in terms of demographics, previous experience, economic circumstances, enrollment on public benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP, and time on the job. This will help inform what steps the government and employers can take to improve retention. With that information in hand, the City should map out exactly how it will recruit and retain the tens of thousands of additional care workers needed to reach universal service. This plan should include a thorough review of permitting and regulation, as well as steps to guard against unintended consequences of expansion such as squeezing out small community providers. 

2. Ensure a living wage for most care economy workers by 2033. Considering the robust return on investments in the care economy, taking care of those who sustain it should not be a difficult call. Models to consider include Washington, D.C.’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, which delivers subsidies for providers that bring their compensation to parity with public school teachers. Members of the New York State Senate have proposed a Child Care Workforce Pay Equity Fund, which would enable New York to deliver an annual wage subsidy of $12,500 to every provider—a strong down payment toward a fairer system.  

Further reading and resources

• Berndt, Alexandra. “New York City Shares Preliminary Plan to Scale Towards Universal Afterschool.” Afterschool Alliance, January 2, 2026.
• Brender, Gregory and Lohr, Shelby. “Testimony of Day Care Council of New York Before the New York City Council Committee on Education.” April 15, 2026.
• Eyewitness News ABC7NY. “Here and Now: Impact of federal funding cuts to NY child care.” February 8, 2026
• Manno, Melissa. “New State Law Could Unlock Thousands of Child Care Seats, Critics See Risk.” New York Focus. May 12, 2026.
• Melodia, Lauren. “Dignified Pay for Quality Care: What New York’s Family Child Care Providers Need to Thrive.” Center for New York City Affairs, November 2025.
• Melodia, Lauren and Tursini, Ledovica. “Universal Child Care Is on Course. But Is Fair Pay for Child Care Workers?” Center for New York City Affairs, February 1, 2026.
• Morris, Gregory J. “Testimony on the New York City Council Oversight Hearing: Early Childhood Educator Workforce Development and Pipeline.” April 15, 2026.
• NYC Comptroller’s Office. “Child Care Affordability and the Benefits of Universal Provision.” January 15, 2025.
• NYC Comptroller’s Office. “Afterschool for Some.” August 27, 2025.
• New York City Council hearing, “The Path to Universal Child Care.” March 2, 2026. 
• New York City Council hearing, “Oversight – Early Childhood Educator Workforce Development and Pipeline.” April 15, 2026.

In addition to brief remarks by Deputy Mayor Julie Su and a presentation from the Department of Youth and Community Development on its Hats & Ladders application, the agenda included an update on New York’s progress toward implementing Workforce Pell, a federal policy passed last year that goes into effect on July 1. The meeting concluded with a spirited discussion and eventual vote on the City’s Fiscal Year 2027 WIOA budget. 

The full video of the meeting is available from the Board’s home page. Below, we take a closer look at the two main subjects.

Workforce Pell 

CUNY Vice Chancellor for Career Engagement and Industry Partnerships Lauren Andersen, who represents Chancellor Félix Matos-Rodríguez on the Board, provided an overview of Workforce Pell and took questions from Board members.  

As a reminder, Workforce Pell—passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025—expands Pell Grant eligibility to shorter-duration programs of 150-599 hours, or 8-15 weeks, that confer credit toward a recognized higher education credential. Eligible programs must be portable (retaining their value across institutions) and stackable (additive in increments toward a degree), and aligned to high-skill, high-wage, in-demand jobs. 

Additional requirements include that programs must be at least one year old, and able to show a verified completion rate of at least 70 percent, with a verified job placement rate of at least 70 percent of completers within 180 days of finishing the program. As Andersen pointed out, this presents a double challenge: the time requirement means that CUNY (or any other institution of higher education) can’t just launch new programs, and even most programs already in place have not had the infrastructure to collect the necessary data. 

While the federal government has weighed in with the administrative rule released in May, much remains to be determined at the state level. Each state’s governor must set definitions for portability and stackability, and establish processes and policies around how programs can prove their outcomes as well as governance. New York’s experience with “TAP for Workforce”—a recent expansion of the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) that expanded state funding for workforce programs offered through higher education—provides some guidance here. CUNY is proposing that the state manage Workforce Pell through an advisory council distinct from Workforce TAP, which is run through the Higher Education Services Corporation.  

Andersen emphasized that Workforce Pell will be a slow build, in New York and elsewhere. Asked how many programs will qualify when the policy goes into effect in July, she responded that between SUNY and CUNY, the initial number could be under 100. 

Our Take

Workforce Pell’s strict eligibility requirements, and the initially small number of qualifying programs, are likely to frustrate many stakeholders who rightly perceive an urgent need for more resources. Understandable as this is, the field should not lose sight of the real potential here: to leverage this new funding stream in ways that help expand the reach and quality of NYC’s larger workforce ecosystem. 

For one thing, the data infrastructure needed to render more programs eligible for Workforce Pell should serve the entire system. One chronic challenge for workforce advocates is proving the value of our programs and services—not just with stories, but with numbers. The City and state have a strong interest in working with CUNY (and SUNY) to build that capacity in a way that can support programs beyond those offered across the two higher ed systems. 

Vice Chancellor Andersen also suggested that Workforce Pell could represent a great opportunity to direct more support toward incumbent workers, who could move up into higher wage roles with additional skills and credentials. We couldn’t agree more. As NYCETC pointed out in last year’s Putting Our Dollars to Work report, the city is home to roughly 900,000 New Yorkers who are employed in low-wage positions. Helping them move up would advance the Mamdani administration’s economic justice agenda—and shift the perception of the workforce system from being focused merely on job placement to a broader emphasis on long-term economic mobility. 

Finally, it’s important to note that as written, Workforce Pell is not oriented toward community-based organizations. Andersen noted that by rule, 75 percent of federal funds must go toward the institution of higher education offering the program, limiting the value proposition for partnering nonprofits. If the City is serious about building the system, it must consider how to supplement those dollars to build more effective norms for referrals and supportive services to help potential Workforce Pell grantees access and successfully complete training. 

WIOA FY 2027 Budget

The other topic of note at the meeting came when WDB members raised questions regarding the City’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) budget. NYC Office of Talent and Workforce Development Executive Director Doug Lipari announced that the City absorbed a nearly 6 percent reduction in formula funding for WIOA compared to last year, with the total allocation dropping from $87.4 million to $82.2 million. Adult and Dislocated Worker (DW) funding was cut by 8.3 percent, while Youth program dollars fell by 1.4 percent. 

While the WIOA Youth budget was approved without issue, Board member and DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido announced that he would be voting against the Adult/DW budget. He noted two objections: the lack of support within the budget for the 10 percent of NYC’s workforce who are government employees, and the uneven playing field between for-profit and nonprofit providers in competing for contracts to operate Workforce1 Career Centers, which the Board approved last year. Specifically, for-profit providers—who hold all but one of the Workforce1 contracts—receive an up-front fee of up to 20 percent for operating the Centers, and have the advantage of being able to fund operations ahead of time by virtue of their larger margins. 

Although a number of Board members echoed Garrido’s concerns, the budget ultimately won approval. The Board additionally approved a motion to submit questions related to the disparity between for-profit and nonprofit providers to the Department of Small Business Services (SBS), which is obligated to respond in writing within 90 days. 

Our Take

As City officials pointed out, WIOA rules mandate that both for-profit and nonprofit providers are eligible to bid on contracts to operate workforce centers. The disparities Garrido pointed out, however, are of genuine concern and beg the question of whether alternate arrangements might free up more dollars to support services.  

SBS and the Mayor’s Office can set the parameters for contracts in a variety of ways. As WDB co-chair Merrill Pond observed, other jurisdictions have made different choices to facilitate a stronger role for nonprofit community-based providers, and offer potential lessons for New York City. NYCETC looks forward to engaging in this discussion over the months and years to come. 

Other Takeaways

• NYC Talent Executive Director Doug Lipari shared that the U.S. Department of Labor came to NYC to conduct an audit earlier this spring. A formal statement of findings is expected in late July, to which the City will respond and make any necessary adjustments. Lipari indicated that the federal auditors were impressed with a number of City practices, including its usage of community partner networks, cohort-based training, and policies related to Individual Training Grants.
• Lipari also referenced that NYC Talent is deploying “a new set of labor market intelligence resources” related to the City’s Industry Partnerships focused on manufacturing, information technology, and healthcare.   
• While presenting on Hats & Ladders, DYCD Associate Commissioner Julia Breitman and Assistant Commissioner Nurus Salam mentioned that 40 percent of employers surveyed last year following the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) indicated that they either offered continued employment or invited their participants back for 2026. Data on the nature and extent of year-to-year employer retention in SYEP traditionally has been limited; from a system-building perspective, this is a potentially significant development. 
• Finally, Board Co-Chair Adria Powell, Doug Lipari and others acknowledged that this Board meeting was the first in many years without longtime WDB Executive Director Chris Neale, who resigned his role earlier this spring to become Executive Director of the New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals (NYATEP). NYCETC looks forward to continuing our long relationship with Chris in his new role.

Suggested Readings

• National Skills Coalition: Making the Most of Workforce Pell; Getting Workforce Pell Right for Young People; Workforce Pell can be a catalyst, unless we try to make it a cure all
• New America: Why Workforce Pell Implementation Matters Beyond July 2026

Watch the Recording