This post is the final installment in a three-part series on the state of youth employment in New York City. Read Part 1 and Part 2 for additional context. In this installment, we outline five strategies our organization has developed and invested in to help build a more unified system—one that ensures every young adult can achieve economic mobility and every community can fully leverage its talent.
New data show that New York City has made remarkable strides over the past 20 years. Since JobsFirstNYC was founded in 2006, the number of young adults who are out of school and out of work (OSOW) has declined by over 90,000—roughly 30%. Across the City, programs have emerged that provide skills training, career exploration, and pathways into sustainable, thriving careers. Yet even as overall OSOW rates have declined in recent decades and stabilized after a pandemic-driven expansion, some communities continue to face systemic barriers that limit access to opportunity. Our recent data brief showed how employment trends for young people vary across race, socio-economic background, and neighborhood. In a follow-up blog, our partners at the Center for New York City Affairs highlighted a stark reality: New York City’s 16- to 24-year-olds face the highest unemployment rate of any age group. The data is clear, and it points to an opportunity to strengthen systems, expand pathways, and ensure every young adult can thrive.
To continue advancing our mission and deepening our impact, JobsFirstNYC has focused on identifying and scaling approaches that drive lasting change for young adults and their communities. The following five strategies offer a practical roadmap for strengthening coordination across systems to expand economic mobility citywide.
1. Invest in Neighborhoods So Young Adults Can Thrive Where They Live.
Communities with the highest rates of young adults who are out of school and out of work are rich in talent and potential, yet many have historically faced disinvestment. Place-based strategies that strengthen schools, workforce pipelines, housing, and community partnerships can expand opportunities and improve economic outcomes for these neighborhoods. Supporting community-led hubs while integrating employer demand and incorporating youth perspectives ensures that investments build on local assets and create opportunities that reflect the strengths and aspirations of each community. JobsFirstNYC has seen this in action: the Brownsville Hub Cooperative shows how unified strategies around education, training, and employment can expand opportunity by leveraging existing community strengths, while Youth WINS on the North Shore of Staten Island brings together partners to strengthen pathways for young people in their community.
2. Strengthen and Modernize Pathways from School to Work.
In recent years, NYC Public Schools and CUNY have made important progress in reimagining public education to better prepare young New Yorkers for the world of work. Signature initiatives like FutureReadyNYC, Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeships, and the emerging CUNY Beyond model offer strong foundations and demonstrate what is possible when education and career preparation are aligned. To build on this momentum, the next phase must focus on scale—universalizing access to career exploration and work-based learning so that paid internships, apprenticeships, and structured workplace experiences are available to all students, not just a subset. Clear, coordinated pathways that link high schools, community-based organizations, colleges, and advanced training providers, through tools like dual-enrollment, which build longer on-ramps, can smooth transitions into higher-skill training and career advancement. Through its Transfer 2 Career (T2C) model, JobsFirstNYC has demonstrated how coordinated work-based learning, career exploration, and direct employer connections can reach thousands of young people. Expanding programs that integrate internships, apprenticeships, and career exploration into the school experience ensures that education becomes a springboard for long-term success.
3. Build Next-Generation Work Solutions for a Changing New York City Economy.
General career awareness and exploration are not enough; young adults also need industry-specific preparation that leads to advancement, paired with durable skills that transfer across roles as the economy evolves. That’s why JobsFirstNYC has focused on three high-growth sectors with strong career pathways and family-sustaining wages—healthcare, technology, and the green economy—while emphasizing competencies like problem-solving, adaptability, and digital fluency. Sectoral employment strategies, like JobsFirstNYC’s Young Adult Sectoral Employment Project (YASEP), provide hands-on, employer-informed training, career coaching, and work-based learning that equip young people with the skills employers actually demand. At the same time, enabling young adults to fully participate in these pathways requires treating supports like universal childcare and pre-K as core workforce infrastructure, not add-ons. When training models strengthen both technical and durable skills and systems remove barriers to participation, New York can expand access to careers that offer stability, growth, and long-term opportunity across the city.
4. Prepare Young Adults to Navigate and Shape an AI-driven Economy.
AI and automation are rapidly reshaping early-career roles, raising expectations for digital fluency, problem-solving, and adaptability across sectors. To keep pace, New York City’s education and workforce systems must better understand how entry-level jobs are changing and continuously align training with emerging skill requirements. JobsFirstNYC already supports the workforce ecosystem in preparing for this shift through initiatives like Skills Mapping and fieldwide AI guidelines developed with workforce partners, helping mission-driven organizations integrate technology in ways that strengthen, rather than replace, human-centered practice. Embedding digital and AI skills into education, training, and work-based learning equips youth to succeed in today’s jobs and the emerging roles of tomorrow. By designing programs and systems that integrate technology with real-world experience, we can ensure young adults are prepared for careers that grow with the city’s economy.
5. Use Youth-Centered Data and Accountability to Drive Results.
Improving outcomes for young adults requires more than tracking headline trends; it requires holding systems accountable for how young people enter, move through, and advance in the labor market. Disaggregated, youth-focused data make it possible to see which schools, programs, and neighborhoods are effectively supporting economic mobility—and where gaps remain. Broad improvements often mask persistent challenges, including unemployment, underemployment, and low-wage, unstable work concentrated in specific communities. Annual reporting on youth labor market indicators, longitudinal tracking from education into employment, and embedding youth outcomes into citywide economic and workforce planning ensure that progress is measured by young adults’ success, not just system activity. Centering young people in defining and interpreting these data further strengthens accountability, builds trust, and ensures that strategies reflect their experiences and aspirations, enabling New York City to refine strategies, scale what works, and ensure progress reaches every community.
Looking Ahead
By investing in community-centered strategies, strengthening pathways from school to work, expanding sector-aligned opportunities, preparing young adults for a changing economy, and using youth-centered data to guide action, New York City can ensure economic mobility reaches every neighborhood. The evidence is strong, the strategies are proven, and the talent and ambition of young New Yorkers are undeniable. By building systems that work for young people and the communities they call home, we can turn progress into lasting opportunity, creating a vibrant, inclusive, and thriving city for everyone.
Acknowledgment: We thank our partners at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School for preparing and analyzing the 2023 American Community Survey data, which made this reporting possible.
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