To make the city affordable, New York must align its education, workforce and economic development strategies.
The idea of “economic justice” in New York City, at its core, means ensuring every New Yorker is able to afford their life and make decisions about their future free from financial burden. Planning for a family, enrolling in school, buying a home, going on vacation and starting a business are attainable goals — provided people have a clear financial path enabled by the City’s investments in policies and programs that prioritize their financial security. Economic justice is not an antibusiness ideology without practical application. It is measurable economic infrastructure that establishes the foundation from which New Yorkers can live the lives they desire, and it begins with an investment in young people.
New York City is home to City University of New York (CUNY), which is often cited as an engine for economic mobility for young people. Six senior colleges and six community colleges rank among the top in the nation for their ability to lift low-income New Yorkers into the middle class, so CUNY must be at the table in any discussion about economic justice. The university provides an affordable education to its students, with two-thirds attending for free and 80% graduating with no debt. And programs like CUNY Beyond and CUNY 2X Tech are aligning career skills and internship opportunities with undergraduate programs to ensure students are prepared to enter the workforce after they graduate.
These successes notwithstanding, rising costs and a changing labor market threaten young New Yorkers’ ability to afford to live here. Since 2019, housing, grocery and childcare costs have gone up an average of 23%, and entry-level job postings have declined 37% since 2022. The Mamdani administration has already laid out ambitious plans to expand childcare and affordable housing and establish City-owned grocery stores. The administration should have the same ambition in the realm of economic justice. By developing a strategy that prioritizes worker protection and creates pathways to a financially sustainable future for every young person in every borough, the City can help ensure New Yorkers are not left behind in this constantly changing labor market.
What signs have we seen so far? In a conversation with Gothamist, Julie Su, the City’s first-ever deputy mayor for economic justice, mentioned the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a successful model for economic development. Her enthusiasm is understandable. If you tour the Brooklyn Navy Yard this summer, you are likely to run into one of the many Brooklyn-based college interns working at a small or medium-sized business operating across the industrial park. You’ll be taken to Newlab, a venture platform supporting critical technology startups at the forefront of innovation. And high school students from the Brooklyn STEAM Center, on break from their summer projects, will be at lunch at Rustik or Russ & Daughters as you walk through the food hall on the main floor of the campus’s largest building.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard has built the model by reimagining a 300-acre former naval shipyard into an innovation campus that houses hundreds of businesses, connects community members with jobs and, through work-based learning and internships, gives the next generation a head start in launching their careers. On their own, each of these components is a successful program. Together, they actualize a vision for economic justice that can make New York City one of the most economically mobile cities in America.
The work starts in schools, but right now there are countless gaps that young people fall through. Every year, about 75,000 New York City Public Schools students enter ninth grade. Just 81% (much higher than it used to be, but down 2% from 2025) of those students graduate from high school, with a smaller cohort matriculating into and completing college. Even fewer will graduate college having completed a paid internship (the Center for an Urban Future estimates that only 12% of CUNY undergraduates do).
In a city with a $127 billion budget and access to some of the largest private-sector institutions in the world, there is no reason for thousands of students to graduate each year without having a paid professional experience. Moreover, there is no excuse for our high school graduation rate to drop, even by 2%, from one year to the next. The education pipeline is often seen as separate from fiscal discussions. But with the Navy Yard as the blueprint, we can ensure that similar economic development projects throughout the five boroughs pave the way for economic success for students as they go through the education system.
We wouldn’t be starting from scratch. The New York City Economic Development Corporation’s (EDC’s) portfolio has no shortage of projects on the right track if smartly woven together with the education system. In Manhattan, SPARC Kips Bay will bring life science, health care and public health education and jobs to the Hunter College Brookdale campus. The project will include a new public high school next to several CUNY campuses, an NYC Health + Hospitals outpatient care and training center, and other research and community investments. Brooklyn’s Sunset Park is primed for redevelopment; the Brooklyn Army Terminal, South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and MADE Bush Terminal are receiving millions of dollars to incubate startups and prepare for New York City’s first offshore wind project. Jamaica, Queens, can look forward to housing, education and job development through the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, JFK Airport redevelopment that will bring 15,000 jobs to the area, and, building on the success of its Brooklyn forebear, a Queens STEAM Center. The Hunts Point Peninsula and Kingsbridge Armory plans promise improvements to historically underinvested regions of the Bronx, and Staten Island’s North Shore Action Plan will add residential, commercial and educational resources across 20 acres of waterfront.
Aligning with economic justice will require each of these projects to coordinate how young people will participate in the economic activity generated from the millions of dollars of investment. EDC’s Economic Mobility Networks are already doing some of this work in Sunset Park, Kips Bay and Hunts Point, but additional coordination with New York City Public Schools, CUNY and workforce-development organizations across city agencies will be needed to create a talent pipeline that will reap benefits from these projects for years to come.
It is not enough to focus on education and economic development. Young people and adults, regardless of their education level, may need to access one of many workforce-development providers for additional training, wraparound services or help finding a job.
Today, workforce development is divided across various City agencies, with few accountability structures. In a Crain’s op-ed earlier this year, Greg Morris and Kathy Wylde suggested building a sister entity to EDC, a Workforce Development Corporation. This organization would bring workforce-development functions across City agencies together, enabling the City to house workforce accountability under one roof, with identifiable owners who could report on outcomes that touch economic justice. If Workforce1 Career Centers are understaffed, Summer Youth Employment Program participation drops or we lose apprenticeships in priority neighborhoods, the Workforce Development Corporation would be responsible for working with the responsible agency owner to correct the issue.
This isn’t only about yielding better economic results for individuals and families. When a ninth grader’s journey from high school to financial security drives the long-term fiscal health of our city, we embrace a new way of understanding our economy.
Every day now, we hear from tech leaders who predict that the majority of white-collar jobs will be eliminated by AI. They would have us believe that, in a couple of years, humans won’t be needed to do most of the jobs we do today. Fortunately, we can determine the future we want. While CEOs and analysts predict a future led by AI, we can choose to prioritize our cities, our neighborhoods and all of the people in them.
