New York City’s economy is changing. The way employers tap talent and our city helps people start careers must change too.
That means building public-private partnerships that bring the city government and employers together to prepare people for the future. It means embracing apprenticeships that help New Yorkers develop valuable skills on the job while putting money directly into their pockets; and it means expanding those apprenticeships to include growing industries like health care and information technology that will power our economy in the century ahead.
When the Adams administration came into office, we knew there was more work to do to meet the new economy and bring this vision to life. Mayor Adams set a broad goal of connecting New Yorkers to 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030 and launched a new Apprenticeship Accelerator to turbocharge these efforts.
Today, these efforts are paying off.
Apprenticeships are gaining momentum here in New York City. As our population ages and retirements increase, apprenticeships are helping both the private and public sector train the next generation of talent. They let employers cultivate valuable skills in real-time and diversify their labor pools, which is why we’ve seen more companies embrace them. In under three years, New York City has grown from around 8,600 apprenticeships to 15,000.
But we cannot just expand the number of apprenticeships available for New Yorkers; we have to make sure these apprenticeships are setting people up for success in growing industries as well. Historically, over 85% of apprenticeship programs were in construction and manufacturing. But thanks to work by the Adams administration and our partners in the private sector, we’ve seen programs in health care, technology, and public service grow by over 60%, with more than 6,300 apprenticeships in non-traditional fields.
The Citywide Nurse Residency Program, a collaboration between the New York Alliance for Careers in Healthcare and local healthcare systems, is helping 29 local hospitals and clinical sites train and retain first-year nurses. Similarly The Data School and Pursuit, developed New York State Department of Labor, registered apprenticeships to prepare people for good-paying careers in the technology field.
This week alone, the Adams administration announced another $2 million investment in nine different organizations to build and expand apprenticeships across diverse sectors from child care to nursing to information technology. All part of Jobs Week – the administration’s weeklong initiative to highlight city programs, bringing opportunity to every block and celebrate the fact that New York City has broken the jobs record eight times under the current administration – this investment will prepare hundreds of people for the jobs of the future.
We are embedding this work directly into our public schools as well. The NYC Public Schools’ Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship initiative, developed in partnership with industry and CareerWise New York, has provided support for and connected over 520 high school students to
apprenticeships with 35 employers since 2022. Major companies like Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Accenture have hired dozens of youth apprentices for roles in finance, technology, and consulting while institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering and Northwell Health are pioneering youth apprenticeship opportunities in health care. The Adams’ administration has invested over $100 million in NYC Public Schools and The City University of New York to develop partnerships and support student success.
Finally, we launched the NYC Talent Apprenticeship Accelerator to build on this momentum, raise resources, cultivate employers, and diversify the talent pipelines, helping us reach our goal of 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030.
Talent is New York City’s greatest asset. Talent drives our economy, creates our prosperity, cares for our communities, and delivers our goods and services. We have incredible talent in every building, block, and borough of our city, and each New Yorker deserves a clear path to a good job. Apprenticeships provide these pathways. By building robust, inclusive career pathways for all job-seeking New Yorkers, we are creating shared prosperity, strengthening the city’s economy, and sustaining our communities for the decades to come.
