In 2025, the cost of living in the New York metro area rose by about 4 percent, with rent up 4.7 percent and child care and school-related costs up nearly 6 percent, well above the national average. In this costly environment, affordability has become the central concern for New Yorkers — and arguably, the defining issue shaping this year’s mayoral race.
Candidates have proposed free buses, grocery subsidies, housing supports and new approaches to business taxes. Each plan speaks to real anxieties, but the debate feels incomplete. Affordability conversations often zero in on individual costs, but the deeper question is whether work and wages provide enough stability to live in New York with dignity.
For immigrant parents, young people starting their careers and low-income New Yorkers, affordability is not only about the rising cost of living, but also about whether opportunities exist to keep pace with those costs. Access to child care, after-school programs and workforce training can provide families with the stability they need to pursue education, job advancement or better-paying careers. English language classes and career pipelines into fields like health care, education, technology and the green economy are designed to help people move from survival jobs into stable, middle-wage work. Yet those ladders of opportunity only matter if people can afford to take the first step.
Affordability in New York City cannot be separated from the structure of our workforce system. As the New York City Employment and Training Coalition’s report, Putting Our Dollars to Work, makes clear, billions of public dollars flow through workforce programs each year, yet the system has not fully delivered for individual New Yorkers or for employers. Too much investment has been tied to low-wage, low-mobility jobs, while reskilling, upskilling and career advancement have not been prioritized at the scale required. The result is a system that leaves workers struggling to keep pace with the cost of living, and employers without the skilled talent they need.
To make New York affordable, the workforce system must be remade to center wages, wealth, equity and entrepreneurship, transforming programs into engines of mobility that build family stability and employer competitiveness alike.
In 2025, the citywide median asking rent in New York City hit $3,491, equivalent to 55 percent of a median household’s income — nearly double the federal affordability benchmark — and rose 3.7 percent year-over-year. Affordability is most strained in the Bronx, where renters face a staggering 81.6 percent rent-to-income ratio, among the highest in the country.
Meanwhile, the cost of child care in the city has soared. Center-based care now averages $26,000 annually, up 43 percent since 2019, and family-based care averages $18,200, a 79 percent rise. Average hourly wages have grown just 13 percent during the same period, but wages for human services and home care workers have lagged even further behind.
These numbers point to a city where mobility is slipping out of reach. New York needs cost-of-living adjustments and living wages to ensure workers are compensated with dignity and respect. City and state leaders, and those now asking New Yorkers for their vote, have a choice to make: continue debating affordability and the workforce as if they are separate issues, or finally treat them as the single, intertwined challenge families face every day.
Addressing affordability in New York City, therefore, requires raising the wage floor and creating pathways into middle-wage careers, expanding deeply affordable housing, and protecting tenants from displacement. The city must also open real wealth-building opportunities: supporting minority- and immigrant-owned businesses, expanding homeownership access, and cutting debt burdens that weigh down working people. Tackling affordability is inseparable from tackling inequity: unless wages, housing and services are made equitable, the promise of this city will remain out of reach for those who make it run.
As candidates continue to roll out their visions, they need to come to terms with the fact that New York’s affordability crisis is a workforce crisis. Families cannot build futures when housing, child care and transit costs consume their paychecks faster than wages can grow. Treating affordability and opportunity as one is the only way to keep New York livable for the workers and families who are the backbone of this city.
Gregory J. Morris is CEO of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition. He previously served as president and executive director of the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center. Wayne Ho is the president and CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council, the nation’s largest Asian American social services agency. Previously, he served as chief strategy and program officer for the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and as the executive director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families.