Mayor de Blasio
Today, we face an affordability crisis that threatens New York’s very soul. Everywhere I go, people tell me they feel their ability to remain here slipping away.
On Monday, I devoted my annual State of the City speech to telling New Yorkers about how we are tackling affordability and to deliver a simple message: This is still your city.
But for that to remain true, we will need more good jobs so New Yorkers can stay New Yorkers. Our goal is to create through direct investment 100,000 permanent jobs paying at least $50,000 a year over the next decade. We will focus on industries where we already have an edge, like film and television, life sciences and tech.
Entrepreneurs are creating businesses in these sectors right here, because they love the talent we have and the opportunities our dynamic, international marketplace offers. And every industry I named has an average salary in the $50,000- to $75,000- a-year range.
The good news is we don’t have to wait. Forty thousand of our 100,000 new jobs will be ready over the next four years. That’s because we’ve already put in motion a lot of what we need to do.
Our life sciences initiative will bring 9,000 jobs with an average salary of $75,000 a year, plus another 7,000 construction jobs. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we’re investing to create 10,000 more jobs with an average salary of $70,000 a year.
And now, we’re announcing an important new initiative in Sunset Park Brooklyn, our Made in New York campus. This is going to be the new center of garment manufacturing and a new film and TV studio. Combined this new business hub will create 1,500 permanent jobs.
This is personal for me, because my grandparents came here from Italy and worked in the garment industry. Like today’s New Yorkers, my grandparents weren’t asking for a free lunch. All they wanted was a chance to succeed. They worked hard. They struggled. In the end, they made it.
That is the story of this city. Our job, our responsibility, is to honor that history by giving the next generation the same opportunity our ancestors had.
