Earlier this month, the de Blasio administration announced its plan to create 100,000 good-paying jobs over the next ten years. The Center for an Urban Future has been the leading organization calling attention to the need for middle class job creation in New York City and developing strategies to achieve this goal

Most recently, an August 2016 New York Daily News op-ed co-authored by CUF Executive Director Jonathan Bowles stated that, “the next plank of the mayor’s inequality agenda should be a strategy to create middle-class jobs.” The op-ed, in addition to CUF’s July 2016 report Making It Here: The Future of Manufacturing in New York City, recommended supporting modern manufacturing to increase job growth. The op-ed also advocated moving beyond manufacturing by building new pipelines into the fast-growing creative and tech sectors, which haven’t always been seen as middle class industries. Both ideas are key parts of the de Blasio administration’s job creation plan, which aims to support the creation of 20,000 new jobs in the industrial and manufacturing sector in the next decade and an additional 30,000 jobs in the tech sector.

The plan also cites data from CUF’s June 2015 Creative New York report and follows the report’s call to provide additional support for the creative and cultural sectors. Under the plan, the city aims to spur 10,000 new jobs in competitive industries such as film and television, fashion, media and design, and music.

Over the past two years, as part of our Middle Class Jobs Project, CUF has published a series of reports, data briefs, and op-eds outlining ideas for creating good-paying jobs across the five boroughs. Some of CUF’s other recent studies and op-eds on middle class jobs include, In Good Health: The Growth Potential of New York City’s Digital Health Sector, Jobs in Transit: Opportunity in the Transit Sector, The Rise (and Fall) of Middle Wage Industries in NYC, Rebuild NYC, Create Good Jobs, and What Mayor de Blasio Can do to Increase Jobs, Income Equality.

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