Former Obama administration official and mayoral candidate Shaun Donovan hopes to add half a million jobs to New York City over the next four years, if elected.
The former HUD secretary is the latest mayoral hopeful to release an ambitious economic recovery platform focused on bringing city employment back up to a pre-pandemic level.
This week, Donovan released a 4,000-word economic recovery plan entitled, “A Jobs Plan that Rebuilds the Economy For All New Yorkers,” which offers an outline to rebuild the city’s tourism and nightlife industries by working “hand-in-hand” with industry partners and Business Improvement Districts, invest in arts and culture and launching campaigns targeting local, regional, international and business travelers.
The mayoral wannabe also wants to boost the city’s life and science sector by creating a “free-standing,” research center in Upper Manhattan as well as a life and science hub in the Bronx offering job training as well as offer a “Grad-School-to-Enterprise” pathway to make it easier for life science PhD students to find work at university research centers.
Job training seems to be a central part to Donovan’s recovery plan which also promises to create the “largest comprehensive skills-based training program in the U.S.” to connect thousands of CUNY and New York City public school students to workplace training in the life sciences, health, information technology, designs, and finance.
The outline also says Donovan will “ensure access” for adults looking for skills training and “ensure and enshrine pay thresholds so that the program does not widen the pay gap.”
As part of the training program, Donovan promises to guarantees that by 2026 the city will connect every high school student to at least one paid job, apprenticeship, or internship opportunity.
In addition, Donovan also proposes creating an “NYC Jobs Corp,” modeled after AmericaCorp, in order to bring together the public, private, academic, and philanthropic sectors to find training and work opportunities for New Yorkers. Donovan proposed a similar program under his plan to combat climate change.
Donovan also plans to meet with New York City’s 100 largest employers to “put in place pragmatic, far-reaching solutions” on how to increase the number of Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers in high-wage and middle-income positions and partner with businesses to “up-skill” New Yorker in the hopes of reducing racial economic inequality.
