According to the New York State Department of Labor, by the year 2000 the majority of jobs will require a college degree, and the occupations that require the highest levels of education will grow the fastest.

• In 1960, half of all New York City jobs were in manufacturing and construction. Today, only 13 percent of jobs are in those fields.
• Over 40 percent of all private sector jobs today are in services and that percentage is expected to grow.
• The greatest growth sectors of New York City's economy will be high-level professional/technical (such as systems analysts and computer programmers), service, and executive managerial occupations. Teachers, financial managers, physicians, lawyers, medical assistants, and physical and occupational therapists will find growing opportunities during the next 10 years.

New York's Future Workforce

Not only will the jobs of the future differ greatly from those of the past, so will the people who perform them. Women, minorities, and immigrants will make up a growing proportion of the labor force during the 21st century.

• Of the 205,000 CUNY students enrolled in 1996, 70 percent were members of minority groups and 62 percent were women.

  In 1990, 2.1 million New Yorkers were foreign-born, of whom 950,000 entered in the 1980s. The census taken a decade earlier, when the total population of the city was higher, found 670,000 foreign-born New Yorkers who had entered in the 1970s.

• CUNY's students reflect this changing face of New York. Almost 50% of 1996 first-time freshmen were born outside the U.S. or in Puerto Rico.
• CUNY students come from more than 145 different countries and speak 115 different languages in addition to English, providing a distinct advantage in an economy that is becoming increasingly global and competitive.
  

"New York's most important resource is its skilled labor force. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of CUNY in providing that resource," said Samuel Ehrenhalt, former Regional Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.