New York Has a Jobs Problem. Let’s Help the People Who Can Fix It.
It’s been described as the biggest workforce redeployment challenge New York has faced since the massive armed forces demobilization following World War II.
As the city struggles to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic and looks toward recovery, it will see a wave of many thousands of workers who need to be re-skilled, upskilled, and ultimately reconnected to jobs in a markedly changed economy. That’s in addition to those who have been historically excluded from the labor market even in strong economic times.
After some two years of economic and public health turmoil, these jobseekers confront a dramatically changed work environment. Many of the small businesses that once might have employed them have shuttered since the onset of the pandemic. The uptake of digital tools may well effect permanent changes in how many other jobs are performed. Workers young and old could face persistent challenges to securing safe, stable, and fairly paid jobs, and to progressing on career pathways.
The burden of helping them falls on our workforce development system. While some of its frontline staff are employed in government agencies, philanthropies, business groups, and organized labor, you’ll find most of them in non-profit social services groups and community-based organizations throughout the city. They help typically low-income workers, including new immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, and young people just getting started in life, gain the skills, credentials, and confidence they need for their jobs.
And as it has with the people they help, the pandemic has, not surprisingly, taken a toll on them, too.
Collaborating with Justin Collins, Andrea Vaghy, and others at the Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) I got a sense of just how that has played out from a survey of some 200 workforce trainers, conducted online between March and May 2021. We described the results of that survey in a recent report published jointly by WPTI and the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School (CNYCA).
The responses to the survey painted a picture of workforce developers gamely struggling to help their clients through the nightmarish early days of the pandemic lockdowns, even as entry-level jobs evaporated and as remaining opportunities sometimes carried significant job-related health risks.
Many workforce professionals also pitched in for clients who were suddenly cut off from their jobs by social distancing shutdowns and who were also living in communities hit hardest by the pandemic. That meant helping them apply for unemployment compensation and other government benefits, and also get housing support, family counseling or legal services.
And, of course, because of social distancing requirements, much of this work went on remotely, without the professional or emotional benefits of direct, face-to-face interaction.
Through it all, these workforce developers demonstrated admirably high levels of professional commitment. At the same time, however, the survey also revealed broadly felt anxiety and insecurity among its respondents.
Some of that stemmed from pandemic-related developments: staff furloughs and on-the-job budget cutbacks; the effects of grant makers shifting priorities toward more immediately felt needs like hunger and health care and away from workforce development; and the stresses of trying to meet job placement goals (and avoid being laid off for “underperformance”) even as the bottom fell out of the job market.
As it did in other areas, the pandemic also revealed and intensified pre-existing sources of distress and dissatisfaction: inadequate pay (see bar chart, below); pay inequity (much of it gender-based); frustration with a lack of creative autonomy on the job; and low morale about long-term career opportunities in the workforce development field.
Source: WTPI-CNYCA workforce survey March-May 2021
These conflicting forces left workforce staff torn between, on the one hand, loyalty to the meaning and value of their work and, on the other, the often-pressing necessity to switch to more secure and better-paying careers.
If that second urge is anywhere near as strong as the survey suggests, it could trigger a widespread exodus from the workforce development field. And that’s something we’ve all got a powerful interest in preventing.
Just look at the facts. Covid-19 has created the largest long-term deficit in New York State’s labor market since the Great Depression. The most recent figures also show that about a quarter of currently unemployed workers in New York City have been jobless for at least six months, and that a roughly equal percentage have been out of work for more than a year.
And as a recent policy brief by my CNYCA colleague James Parrott forcefully argues, absent aggressive investments in workforce development and training, such appalling conditions are likely to persist for years to come, with especially ruinous consequences for Black and Hispanic workers and their families.
A key element in turning that situation around is retaining, and improving conditions for, frontline workforce development professionals. Despite low pay and high stress, they have, especially over the last two years, shown themselves to be creative, committed, mission-driven, and resilient problem-solvers. They, and all they bring to their work, are crucial to the next phase of New York City’s economic recovery.
They are, in short, essential workers. Let’s provide them the support – including the fair compensation, family-sustaining job security, and opportunities for professional growth and advancement – that they deserve.