MIDTOWN — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration wants the city’s growing tech sector to use home-grown talent to fill its ranks in the future and is planning training programs to help achieve that goal, his staffers said Wednesday.
The push comes the day after a new report commissioned by the Association for a Better New York, Google and others found the city’s tech “ecosystem” added 45,000 jobs to the city’s economy over the past 10 years, growing at a faster rate than the overall city economy.
“Our goal is simple: we don’t want you to go to Stanford (University) or overseas when you’re looking for talent. We’re going to give you the people you need, right here in New York City,” Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said during her remarks at a Wednesday breakfast hosted by ABNY.
The report also found that jobs in the city’s tech industry, which includes traditional tech jobs as well as jobs in other sectors like healthcare and retail that require specific technical backgrounds, pay more 45 percent more than the average city salary.
Glen praised the Bloomberg administration's focus on wooing tech companies to the city, but criticized them for leaving “regular New Yorkers” out of the economic equation.
Now, the city will refocus on job training and education efforts to create a “real pipeline” of skilled workers ready to step into tech positions that cross over job sectors, from finance to construction, according to Glen.
Glen announced a new task force called Jobs for New Yorkers would be launched next week, which she said would “create more nimble, responsive workforce training and create real pipelines to our fastest growing, good paying employers.”
“What we want to do is take that growth, and link it directly to making sure that New Yorkers have an opportunity to participate in that wonderful growth story,” she said.
Additionally, Katy Gaul-Stigge was named the head of the newly renamed Office of Workforce Development, which will coordinate across city agencies and with private sector partners to implement new tech policy.
