New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today issued, “The C-Note,” his periodic column focusing on economic and budget issues affecting New York City. Today’s column is titled: “Building Skills and Careers:  Maximizing the Effectiveness of New York City’s Workforce Development Programs.”

You can view the column by visiting www.comptroller.nyc.gov and by clicking on the ticker at the top of the home page. In last week’s column, the Comptroller spelled out three priorities to which New York City must commit to weather troubling economic times.

THE C-NOTE: “Building Skills and Careers:  Maximizing the Effectiveness of New York City’s Workforce Development Programs”

By Glenn von Nostitz, Director, Office of Policy Management
and Joan Westmeyer, Policy Analyst

As our city’s economy is buffeted by national financial crises, more New Yorkers need help to qualify for an entry-level job or to move into better paying job requiring higher skills.  At the same time, employers need help because they often have difficulty finding workers qualified to fill those middle and high skill jobs.

Ensuring that enough New Yorkers have the training required to fill a broad array of positions requiring more than basic skills – thus easing their pathway into the middle class – is vital to the our prosperity. The Comptroller’s Office recently conducted a review to determine whether New York City’s billion dollar workforce development system, largely funded by the State and Federal governments, is positioned to meet this challenge.

In our report, Demands of the Times:  Turing the Workforce Development Model of the Last Century into a Skills Education Model for Today, we found that the City’s workforce development system has seen considerable improvement in recent years.  However, little effort has been made to coordinate the myriad agencies and programs that comprise the City’s labyrinthine workforce development system.     

Among the agencies that play a major role in workforce development are the Department of Education, the Human Resources Administration, the Department of Small Business Services, and the City University.  The City University is a semi-autonomous entity, and the other three agencies report to three different deputy mayors.

As a result, there is a lack of common vision or agreement on desired results.  There is not even a directory or list of all the available programs -- we counted 33 different ones. And our Office’s calculation that the City administered over $925 million of such programs in fiscal year 2008 appears to be the only such estimate available.

The balkanization of the system has consequences. Efforts can be duplicated. For example, programs to reduce barriers to employment by improving New Yorkers’ basic literacy skills are funded through the Human Resources Administration, the Departments of Youth and Community Development, Education, and Small Business Services, and the City University.

There is little coordination. The Department of Education’s 21 Career and Technical Schools have nothing to do with the rest of the workforce development system, but are left on their own to determine what programs to offer and to make connections with businesses for much-needed expertise, equipment and internship opportunities.

The Comptroller’s Office has urged the establishment of a Mayor’s Office for Skills Education to ensure that the City’s workforce development efforts are comprehensively planned, fully coordinated, and focused on fields and jobs where career ladders exist as well as on sectors where the City seeks a competitive advantage and where our economy can diversify.

A number of prominent economists agree that an expanding skills gap in this country is widening the gulf between rich and poor and putting economic pressure on the middle class.  Elevating workforce development to this higher level within the Mayor’s Office would give it the prominence it needs to meet its goals. 

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