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The Region's - And The World's -
Changing Labor Market
The City University is poised to meet the challenges of change: changing markets and regional demography.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs requiring a Bachelor's degree will grow at almost twice the rate of jobs for high school graduates by the year 2006. CUNY graduates will be prepared to fill these jobs, which are already growin
g rapidly: the number of new jobs added in New York in 1997 rose 69% from the previous year (a majority of the state's new jobs were created within the City).
- The State Department of Labor reports that the region's economy will experience rapid growth in several sectors requiring workers with college degrees. Its report, Tomorrow's Jobs, Tomorrow's Workers, estimates that by the year 2000 "87% of all jo
bs will require education beyond high school and more than half will require a college degree."
- CUNY's Citizenship Now initiative facilitates the naturalization process, easing the path of recent immigrants into the economic mainstream.
- Recent U.S. Department of Labor data show that employment status is closely related to educational attainment: for individuals over 25 with no high school diploma the unemployment rate was 7.2%, for high school graduates 3.9%, for holders of a
Bachelor's the rate dropped to 2.2% and for Master's holders 1.5%.
- The Federal Department of Labor Statistics predicts a regional decline in manufacturing, while sectors of the economy demanding education-intensive work forces will rise. Health services, business services, social services and engineering, management
and related services - fields in which CUNY produces many graduates - are expected to account for half of all wage and salary jobs added to the economy between 1996 and 2006.
- CUNY is among the nation's leading providers of continuing educational opportunities - 43% of its students are 25 or older and 59% work part- or full-time. The Department of Labor reports that employers are increasingly seeking workers who hav
e the flexibility to continue their education on the job. Companies undergoing down-sizing and reorganization require increasingly complex packages of skills that CUNY's adult and continuing education programs supply.
- CUNY is offering the first Family Colleges in the nation at Bronx, Kingsborough, and LaGuardia Community Colleges; these Colleges allow parents on public assistance to earn Associate degrees while their young children attend a satellite public
school on campus.
- To provide students with the maximum benefits of new educational technology, CUNY plays a key role in NetTech, a consortium in 12 northeastern states dedicated to the effective integration of new electronic and Web-related resources. NetTech i
s funded at $8 million for five years by the U.S. Department of Education.
New York's Future
Work Force
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 21st century labor force.
- Of the 200,000 CUNY students enrolled in 1997, 71% were members of minority groups and 62% were women.
- The CUNY student body also reflects the rise in the numbers of foreign-born residents, with approximately half of its entering 1996 freshman class born outside the U.S. mainland. In 1990, 2.1 million New Yorkers were foreign-born, of whom 950,000 ent
ered in the 1980s. CUNY students will thus be well suited to meet the challenges of serving the unique demography of the region's economy.
- Speaking more than 100 languages in addition to English, CUNY graduates will be perfectly positioned for success in all sectors of the increasingly closely integrated global economy. In its report Educating for Global Competence, the Am
erican Council on Education states that 86% of corporations believe managers and employees with greater international knowledge will be needed in future decades. A 1995 survey of foreign language needs at 33 federal agencies, for example, has concluded t
hat these agencies have more than 34,000 positions that require foreign language proficiency.
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