Ask almost any New Yorker about their first job, and they’ll probably smile before they answer. Maybe it was scooping ice cream on a hot summer afternoon. Waiting tables at the neighborhood diner or helping at the corner store. Few of those jobs became careers, but almost all became something just as important. They were where someone trusted us with responsibility, where we earned our own paycheck, and where we began to imagine what might come next.
This summer, tens of thousands of young New Yorkers will begin writing that same story through New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Some will spend the summer close to home, working alongside the owners of neighborhood businesses that have anchored their communities for generations. Others will step inside hospitals, museums, parks, construction sites, community organizations, city agencies, and offices they may never have imagined themselves entering. For some, the experience will carry them beyond the streets they know best and into a different corner of the city, revealing possibilities they never considered. That journey matters.
The economy has changed. The summer and part-time jobs that once introduced so many young people to the world of work have become harder to find. Entry level opportunities have declined, and teenagers increasingly compete with adults for positions that previous generations often took for granted. We cannot afford to lose that first rung on the ladder.
For more than sixty years, New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development has helped preserve it. Through the Summer Youth Employment Program, young people gain more than a paycheck. They build confidence, learn how to navigate a workplace, and begin to see themselves in careers they may never have imagined.
Potential is universal. Opportunity is not. Every neighborhood in New York is filled with talented young people. What too many lack is not ability, but access: access to workplaces, to mentors, and to experiences that expand their sense of what is possible.
No matter the community, every young person is searching for the same things: safety, belonging, purpose, respect, and the chance to build a life they can be proud of. Those needs are universal. The question is not whether young people will find ways to meet them. The question is whether we, as a city, create pathways that help them do so in healthy, hopeful, and productive ways.
This is why youth opportunity and public safety cannot be separated. Safe communities are built long before a crisis occurs. They are built when young people have caring adults who know their names, places where they belong, meaningful work that gives them purpose, and opportunities that allow them to imagine a future larger than the circumstances they face today.
There may be no greater classroom than New York City itself. Every neighborhood has something to teach. Every workplace opens another window into the life of this city.
This summer, a young person may spend the day inside one of the world’s great museums. Another may help patients find their way through a hospital. Another may learn what it takes to keep a neighborhood business running. Each experience offers more than practical skills. It offers perspective. It reminds a young person that they belong in these spaces, and that one day they may lead them.
As New York works to make our city more affordable, we must also make it more accessible. Affordability is about more than easing today’s burdens. It is about ensuring that every young person can envision a future here and has a meaningful pathway to build it. That responsibility belongs to all of us.
Every employer who opens their doors this summer is doing more than filling a seasonal position. They are investing in the future of our city. Every nonprofit organization that prepares a participant, every supervisor who takes the time to teach, and every small business owner who says yes to a first-time worker helps strengthen the next generation of New Yorkers.
Years from now, many of these young people will be asked about their first job. I hope they’ll smile before they answer. Not because of the paycheck they earned, but because that summer was when someone opened a door, believed in their potential, and helped them see a future they had not yet imagined. That is the enduring promise of Summer Youth Employment. And that is one of the most important investments we can make in New York City’s future.
Sandra Escamilla-Davies is the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD).