October 29, 2010The public, private and not-for-profit sectors were invited to provide testimony at the New York State Tri-Level Legislative Task Force Hearing held at Brooklyn Borough Hall on October 29, 2010. The Tri-Level Legislative Task Force has the mandate of bringing the three layers of government together in a coordinated effort to help create and examine Jobs for the 21st Century. Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Carl Hum delivered the following testimony on behalf of the borough's business commmunity:
Good morning. My name is Carl Hum and I am the president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, a 92-year old membership organization that serves and advocates on behalf of our membership to foster a healthy business environment in Brooklyn. Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Tri-level Joint Legislative Task Force on Jobs for the 21st Century.
In order to understand the borough’s future job needs, we need to examine our current job landscape. For the past few years, thanks to the support of the Brooklyn delegations of the New York State Assembly and New York City Council, the Chamber has annually published the Brooklyn Labor Market Review to provide an understanding of what makes Brooklyn’s economy tick. In a few words, it is our diverse job base. It is this diverse job base that has helped Brooklyn weather the storms of the current recession and the prior recession of 2001-2003, as the borough’s job losses are not as severe as the overall City’s. While one out of five jobs in the borough is either in the healthcare, education and social services fields, Brooklyn’s businesses still manage to cover a vast amount of industries with recent job gains from 3Q 2008 through 1Q 2010 in the healthcare, professional services, and accommodation and food service sectors.
The question before us today is how do we capitalize on the industry growth trends to insure that we have a balanced job base that insures economic diversity and are able to employ a range of skills while offering competitive wages and career ladder opportunities. Fortunately, we do not need to look far as some of this work already has been done.
A few years ago, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), an effort spearheaded by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, came to Brooklyn to launch an Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn (ICB) that would identify areas of future job growth that could achieve the aforementioned goals. The effort included nearly 200 stakeholders including the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, the City of New York and many businesses. The conclusions drawn seven years ago still apply today. The group identified four areas that would increase Brooklyn’s competitiveness so that its residents would have better, higher-paying jobs. These areas are health services; food processing; hospitality, tourism, arts and culture; and construction. Allow me to discuss each briefly:
Health Services – As mentioned, this sector was one of the few that gained jobs during this recession and prior recessions. It is testimony to both the fact of our increasing (and longer-living) population and the presence of premier health institutions throughout the borough. However, the sector is not without its vulnerabilities as our hospitals continue to face labor shortages and struggle financially due to the fact that “charity care funds” only cover a fraction of the cost of treating uninsured individuals. For many of our hospitals, the uninsured and indigent compose a large portion of their clientele. As noted in the Chamber’s federal Agenda for Growth, we have advocated for fairer reimbursement rates.
Food Processing – In a prior Brooklyn Labor Market Review, we identified specialty food manufacturing as a growing sub-sector that gained jobs within our borough. This growth speaks to Brooklyn’s natural assets: our easy access as a distribution network, our (and the region’s) rich consumer market, and our diversity of ethnicities and cultures. While our borough may have lost jobs in manufacturing in recent decades, food manufacturing holds one of the best promises to continue our manufacturing tradition that has reliably provided good jobs at competitive wages. However, current economic development programs to encourage such growth are not fully matched to Brooklyn’s needs. For example, the State’s newly-introduced Excelsior Jobs Program, designed to foster manufacturing, demands job creation levels that are inconsistent with how Brooklyn companies grow and establish themselves.
Hospitality, Tourism, Arts and Culture – This sector is burgeoning in our borough as new attractions such as Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Museum of the Contemporary African Diasporan Arts open and other mainstays such as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Brooklyn Museum attract more visitors. According to the Brooklyn Labor Market Review, this sector even has seen job gains during the economic downturn. As noted in a prior Agenda for Growth, continuous funding for our arts and cultural institutions spur further economic growth as evidenced by the aforementioned job gains.
Construction – While the construction sector was more robust before the onset of the economic downturn, it is poised for recovery as capital markets become accessible again. Moreover, recent rezonings will encourage further growth and development and create new neighborhoods. As noted in the ICB report, we need to create better linkages between residents and construction opportunities, and help smaller firms gain capacity to effectively compete for prized construction jobs.
These areas of growth are, of course, dependent on Brooklyn’s workforce preparedness and as we look to the future, we must be sure to address present concerns such as the skills mismatch problem that currently plagues our region and nation. Additionally, we must insure that our disconnected youth are either in job training programs or encouraged to return to school. Employer-based workforce development programs such as On-the-Job Training, Summer Youth Employment, and other wage subsidy initiatives could go a long way toward achieving that goal, but they must be fully funded and supported.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this morning. The Chamber and its membership look forward to working with the Tri-level Joint Legislative Task Force in preparing Brooklyn’s workforce for the 21st century. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.