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LIBRARIES TEACH TECH: BUILDING SKILLS FOR A DIGITAL WORLD

This new data brief finds that NYC’s public libraries are playing an increasingly important role in helping New Yorkers develop the technology skills needed in today’s economy. It shows that the city’s libraries provided tech training to more than 150,000 New Yorkers in 2015, an 81 percent increase from just three years earlier.

If New York City is going to succeed in reducing inequality and put more New Yorkers on the path to the middle class, it will need to significantly increase the number of city residents with digital skills. That’s because so many of the good-paying jobs being created in today’s economy require some level of technology skills. These jobs include the bulk of opportunities in the city’s soaring tech sector, but also a growing share of the positions in more traditional fields, from health care to manufacturing, which are adopting new technologies at a rapid clip. In fact, a recent report by Burning Glass found that 88 percent of middle-skill jobs in New York were digitally intensive. 

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