Dear Future of Workers Task Force Members, Advisors, Facilitators, and Friends:

We are very excited to share with you the release of Pathways to an Inclusive Economy: the Future of Workers Task Force Blueprint, the culmination of many hours of thoughtful contributions, insights, and vast experience. The Blueprint prioritizes five strategic levers in our ongoing work together, so that more New Yorkers find career success and employers can tap the talent they need to thrive.

As you all well know, this report represents months of collaboration and years of collective expertise from dozens of you, our closest public and private workforce partners, as we all work toward a thriving, inclusive New York City economy.  The Blueprint provides a road map to coordinate resources, uplift best practices, and build and sustain momentum within the city’s talent ecosystem to better support NYC employers and New Yorkers of all ages in search of good jobs and opportunity, starting with these five strategic levers:

1. Reimagine and empower the NYC Workforce Development Board with increased private sector leadership;
2. Create and administer a new public/private Talent Investment Fund, launched with an initial commitment of $15 million from the City, which will be matched by private funds;
3. Expand access to apprenticeships, affirming the Mayor’s State of the City moonshot goal of supporting 30,000 apprentices in NYC by 2030;
4. Establish shared impact metrics to articulate and report system-level outcomes and measure progress; and
5. Improve the user experience for employers engaging with the public workforce system, starting by building an employer-facing “front door.”

Public and private partners must collaborate, innovate, and invest together to achieve shared prosperity and equity for workers, business, and the city as a whole.

We are deeply grateful to everyone for their time, expertise, insights, and vision for a better talent and workforce development system. These strategies are already in motion, and we look forward to continuing to work closely in partnership to implement these recommendations.  Together, by operationalizing these five strategic levers, we can collectively make progress on the citywide objectives detailed in Executive Order 22 and realize our shared vision for NYC’s talent development system.

In partnership,

Abby and the NYC Talent Team