LaGuardia and Hostos Community Colleges, in partnership with The New York Community Trust, are launching a new initiative to help low-income communities throughout New York — with a focus on Queens and The Bronx — that have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. The NYC Accelerated Workforce Recovery Hub is a new model for high-quality workforce development at scale. It is funded by a seed grant of $1.65 million from the New York Community Trust, the City’s community foundation. Additional donors and federal grants will contribute to building and expanding the Hub over time.
The Hub will provide workforce training for high-demand jobs for at least 400 New Yorkers over an initial 18-month pilot period. By helping the colleges expand support services to connect graduates to jobs and higher education, the initiative is expected to ultimately impact over 3,000 students.
“The pandemic has had a devastating economic impact on New Yorkers and has wrought an agonizing toll on communities,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “We are grateful to the New York Community Trust for this support, which will endow workforce training programs at LaGuardia and Hostos Community Colleges. Preparing New Yorkers who have lost their livelihoods because of COVID-19 for careers in high-demand sectors is a critical step in our city and state’s recovery.”
“CUNY community colleges’ continuing education divisions are ideally positioned to prepare people for good-paying jobs,” said Roderick Jenkins, program director for youth and workforce development at The New York Community Trust. “The Workforce Recovery Hub will ensure immediate and equitable access to workforce training for hundreds of unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers looking to advance their careers.”
“The Hub is an audacious effort that will open up access to a wide variety of in-demand workforce training programs through scholarships and wraparound support services,” said LaGuardia Community College President Kenneth Adams. “Our partners at the New York Community Trust and community-based organizations and colleagues at CUNY and Hostos Community College share our aim to help New Yorkers who were severely impacted by the pandemic to advance into jobs that move them forward in life and stability.”
“Partnering with LaGuardia with the support of the New York Community Trust to bring the NYC Accelerated Workforce Recovery Hub to scale is a vital step towards supporting the growth and empowerment of our communities which have been so severely impacted during these difficult times,” said Hostos Community College President Daisy Cocco De Filippis. “Sharing our resources and educational acumen to positively impact the workforce of New York City is important and we are proud to be a part of the work.”
Accelerated Training for Good Jobs
The NYC Accelerated Workforce Recovery Hub community partners in Queens and The Bronx will be engaged to recruit underemployed and unemployed residents who are eager to recover from setbacks imposed by the ongoing pandemic. LaGuardia will collaborate with Commonpoint Queens and Queens Community House; Bronx partners are being selected.
Students will receive full- and partial-tuition scholarships for the colleges’ high-quality accelerated professional training in programs such as medical assistant, nursing assistant, electrical, pharmacy technician, patient care tech and IT support, to prepare them for well-paying jobs that require an industry-recognized certification to get hired. They will earn college credits that can be applied toward a college degree in the future.
The first cohort of approximately 50 students, expected to begin in March, will receive training for one of eight jobs in health care, technology and construction. Each semester, training programs will be reassessed to reflect the needs of the ever-changing labor market.
Targeting Those Hardest Hit by COVID-19
The NYC Accelerated Workforce Recovery Hub initiative seeks to address critical issues of workforce equity, and the ability to bring high impact workforce training programs to scale within our communities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially cruel to low-income communities of color in Queens and The Bronx, the communities served by LaGuardia and Hostos. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers were infected at much higher rates than other groups, accounting for nearly 62 percent of all confirmed deaths from COVID-19.
These communities were also the worst hit by the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic. Two-thirds of pandemic-related job losses in NYC were among persons of color, with Latinx workers bearing 32 percent of lost jobs. The Bronx recorded the highest level of out-of-school, out-of-work young adults in 2020, with 37 percent of all young adults. According to a Pew Research Center report, Black and Hispanic workers continue to face significantly higher rates of unemployment than white workers; the same goes for less educated workers compared with more highly educated workers. According to data from Opportunity Insights, low-wage employment (defined as making less than $27,000 a year) is still trailing pre-pandemic levels by about 20 percent.
Many Queens and Bronx residents do not want to return to the low-wage and unstable restaurant and retail jobs that evaporated during the pandemic. Instead, they seek higher quality jobs with more stability and a brighter future for themselves and their families.
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