While New York City’s economy has made some strides since 1992, teenage employment continues to lag behind the national average. The place of NYC youth aged 16-19 years old in the job market remains far behind the rest of the nation.  Both public and private initiatives are required.

The Problem. The City’s youth labor-force-participation rate was 27.2 percent in 1998, barely more than half the national average of 52.8 percent. Nearly twice as many NYC youths were not looking for work than nationally. They include many would-be workers discouraged by prior failures to find work. Of the 16 largest metro areas, the NYC metro area has the lowest youth labor force participation rate. Even among youth who are part of the labor force, New York’s youth unemployment rate of 26.6% in 1998 was almost twice the national average and the highest among the 16 largest metro areas.

NYC’s unusually high youth unemployment persists for several reasons. Employers expect work-ready employees with skills, the skills required by the City’s employers are of a high level and continually changing, and the NYC job market lacks sufficient entry-level, low-skilled jobs.  Short- and long-term solutions are needed.

Short Term Remedies.  With a cooling economy, the immediate challenge for the City is to deal with the impact of more teenagers looking for work when fewer employers are offering jobs.

• Help students get ready for the workplace. The concentration of high-skilled professional jobs in the City has set a high minimum standard for entry-level applicants, especially for youngsters who lack basic reading, writing, computer, and telecommunications skills. A special focus is needed on students who do not wish to go on to college, to ensure that they have skills to offer to obtain an entry-level job. In the short term, this may mean courses on workplace readiness. In the longer term, it requires ensuring that vocational programs are linked to concrete job prospects.
• Create more summer jobs. A productive way to introduce students to the workplace, and employers to students, is through summer jobs. The economic downturn threatens summer jobs programs. A special promotional effort by City government and business associations is needed to ensure that summer jobs programs are fully functioning this summer. 
• Sponsor more apprenticeship programs for teenagers. Public-private apprenticeship programs should be promoted, especially for groups with consistently high unemployment rates such as black and Latino teenagers. 
• Attract and grow more entry-level jobs. City government must continue to encourage businesses to locate and grow in NYC. For unemployed teenagers, the greatest need is for more entry-level, low-skilled jobs. Such jobs are most likely in the retail sector and in niche manufacturing businesses. 

• City government should encourage small businesses to create new jobs for City residents.  It should provide employers with a tax credit for each new employee they hire, rewarding employers for creating jobs.
• Require employers who participate in the job creation program to have a plan for training their new workers. This would encourage more interaction between businesses and educational institutions, one key to the success of high-tech centers like Boston’s Route 128 and California’s Silicon Valley. Such a plan would create incentives for employees to undertake training that leads to a job, encourage employers to reimburse the cost of tuition, and encourage them to provide a job or promotion after the training.
• Attract specialized manufacturing to the City. Manufacturing has always been an important source of low-skilled jobs for New York City, accounting for 30 percent of all jobs in 1950. Today, manufacturing represents only 6.5 percent of the City’s jobs. While costs in the City may not be attractive to mass-production operations, the City could still attract high quality, customized manufacturers with proper incentives and planning. The City could: (1) Designate some areas as industrial communities. These areas would be entitled to changes in zoning, easing limitations on industrial activities. (2) Encourage the creation of industry clusters in designated areas and develop place-specific economic programs for areas. (3) Modify its tax policies to encourage manufacturing exports from the City. 

This article was edited from an “Economic Notes” report issued by the NYC Comptroller’s Office. Prepared by John Tepper Marlin, Farid Heydarpour, Michael Zhang.

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