RESEARCH BRIEF
Critical Services, High Growth, Low Wages
Employment and Wage Trends Across New York’s Human Services Workforce
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Given the focus on understanding wages for the nonprofit sector, this analysis specifically uses industry data for private employment. Private employment includes nonprofit organizations and excludes government employment (there is no way to isolate nonprofit wages from the data).
Note that industry names and occupation names sometimes align, for example, "Child Day Care Services" (the industry) and "Childcare Worker" (the occupation). The industry data includes employment and wage information for everyone working for the establishment, e.g., all workers employed by a Child Day Care Services business, regardless of role. In turn, the occupation data includes employment and wage information for those whose occupation is Childcare Worker, regardless of the type of business or organization they work for.
Childcare Workers do not include Teachers, which is considered a separate occupation.
CUNY ISLG used two cost-of-living methodologies for this analysis including the Self-Sufficiency Standard from the Center for Women’s Welfare, University of Washington and the “Living Wage Calculator” by Amy K. Glasmeier at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For this exercise, we used the threshold values for a single adult household, however, cost of living varies by household size and composition. Importantly, the cost of living increases substantially when caring for younger children. These measures (though not the Federal Poverty Threshold) vary by location. Unless otherwise noted (as with NYC-specific Self Sufficiency Standard), the thresholds refer to the cost of living for New York state overall.
Listed in alphabetical order

New York’s human services sector is crucial to the State’s social fabric, with hundreds of thousands of people across the state relying on these public services. Despite this importance, the staff who provide them consistently make less than the cost of living, straining the pipeline of people entering and staying in these fields.

CUNY ISLG has conducted an in-depth analysis to better understand the breadth of the state’s human services landscape and their wages, as well as quantify the need for investment in it, to lay out a roadmap to a more robust, sustainable, and effective public sector.

Executive Summary

New York’s human services sector is crucial to its social fabric. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people across the state rely on these public services, whether it be childcare, homelessness prevention, mental healthcare, or services for older adults. These services seek to provide all New Yorkers—no matter their income, zip code, or background—with the tools and support to lead healthy, safe, financially stable lives.

With the growing affordability crisis and lingering socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, need for these resources have grown exponentially in recent years; to fill this demand, services funded by state and local governments are increasingly contracted out to nonprofit organizations, amounting to as much as $9 billion a year in New York City alone. Despite the importance of these services, wages in the human services sector lag behind the cost of living in New York, straining the pipeline of people entering and staying in these careers, and forcing many workers to experience the same financial and wellbeing strains as the people they serve.

What are human services?

There is no one single or definitive definition of human services, but generally, services can include and are not limited to community mental health and substance abuse services; alternatives to incarceration and reentry services; food and nutrition assistance; family, child, and youth services; housing and shelter services; employment and workforce services; services for older adults; legal and victim assistance; and services for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Human services are provided in a number of settings, such as via social service agencies or community-based, residential, or institutional settings. This report focuses on the human services workforce, specifically those workers providing client-contact services. The most predominant of these occupations include home health aides, nursing assistants, and childcare workers.

Recent research has shown that workers employed by nonprofit organizations contracted by the government earn significantly lower wages than their government-employed peers—and that these wages have not keep up with cost of living. In other words, by privatizing public services, the nonprofit human services workforce faces low wages despite providing skilled and critical services.

In 2024, a group of New York-based human service workers, executives, advocates, and former government leaders began Bring Up Minimum Pay (BUMP), an anti-poverty campaign that promotes wages that reflect the true cost of living for New York human services workers. To provide data and analysis, BUMP approached the Institute for State & Local Governance at the City University of New York (CUNY ISLG) to conduct an analysis to better comprehend the breadth of the State’s human services landscape, understand the prevailing average wages of nonprofit employees that provide client-contact human services contracted by the State, and explore whether human services workers experienced real wage gains over time. A second analysis then measured the gap between human services wages and the cost of living in New York. Below are select findings from each analysis. See the full report here.

SIZE AND SCALE OF THE HUMAN SERVICES SECTOR IN NEW YORK

  1. Human services employment has a large footprint across the state. 1 in 9 New York employees work in a human services-related industry. Human services-related employment has nearly doubled to almost a million since 2000.
  2. Real wages for human services workers remained stagnant over the past two decades. Workers in human services-related industries earned about $40,000 in 2023 compared to the statewide average of $90,000—up about 3 percent versus 12 percent, respectively, since 2000. Importantly, real wages for Home Health Care Services, the largest human services industry, declined by as much as 6 percent since before the pandemic.
  3. Women of color, many of whom are immigrants, make up the vast majority of the human services workforce. Home health aides, nursing assistants, and childcare workers—the occupations that make up the majority of the sector—have the lowest wages in the sector and, as a result, higher rates of poverty and public benefit utilization than other individuals across New York.

HUMAN SERVICES WAGES VS. COST OF LIVING

  1. Half of human services workers across New York State earn wages that are below the cost of living. Over 80 percent of human services worker households with children earn below the cost of living.
  2. Human services workers are underpaid by about $20,000 per worker each year. The cost of living for a single adult New Yorker is about $60,000 per worker per year—or about $27-$29/hour on a full-time basis. This is much higher than typical wages of about $40,000 per year for workers in a human services-related industry.
  3. Wages below the cost of living are widespread for the human services workforce throughout New York. Upstate New York is more affordable relative to the New York City area but generally there is still a gap between the cost of living and the wages human services workers earn throughout the state.
Introduction
Despite the importance of these services, wages in the human services sector lag behind the cost of living in New York, straining the pipeline of people entering and staying in these careers, and forcing many workers to experience the same financial and wellbeing strains as the people they serve.

New York’s human services sector is crucial to the state’s social fabric. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people across the state rely on these public services, whether it be childcare, homelessness prevention, mental healthcare, or services for older adults. These services seek to provide all New Yorkers—no matter their income, zip code, or background—with the tools and support to lead healthy, safe, financially stable lives.

With the growing affordability crisis and lingering socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, need for these resources have grown exponentially in recent years; to fill this demand, services funded by state and local governments are increasingly contracted out to nonprofit organizations, amounting to as much as $9 billion a year in New York City alone. Despite the importance of these services, wages in the human services sector lag behind the cost of living in New York, straining the pipeline of people entering and staying in these careers, and forcing many workers to experience the same financial and wellbeing strains as the people they serve.

Notably, recent research has shown that workers employed by nonprofit organizations contracted by the government earn significantly lower wages than their government-employed peers—and that these wages have not kept up with cost of living. In other words, by privatizing public services, the nonprofit human services workforce faces low wages despite providing skilled and critical services.

In 2024, a group of New York-based human service workers, executives, advocates, and former government leaders began Bring Up Minimum Pay (BUMP), an anti-poverty campaign that promotes wages that reflect the true cost of living for New York human services workers. To provide data and analysis, BUMP approached the Institute for State & Local Governance at the City University of New York (CUNY ISLG) to quantify the need for investment in the human services workforce, and in future work, measure the benefits of paying these staff a wage that accounts for the true cost of living.

As part of this project, CUNY ISLG sought to better understand the breadth of the state’s human services landscape and the prevailing wages of those nonprofit employees that provide human services contracted by the State. CUNY ISLG used publicly available data to paint a high-level picture of the human services industry across the state, estimate average wages for the workforce, and explore whether human services workers experienced real wage gains over time. Additionally, the analysis measured the gap between human services wages and the cost of living in New York.

The findings from this labor market analysis, presented in this brief, show that as human services employment doubled in New York over the past two decades, real wages fell, especially for the lowest paid workers. Not surprisingly then, the analysis finds that the majority of human services workers earn below the cost of living and have higher rates of public benefit utilization and lower rates of health insurance than other New Yorkers.

More specifically, this analysis found:

  • Human services employment has a large footprint across the state. 1 in 9 New York employees work in a human services-related industry. Human services- related employment has nearly doubled to almost a million since 2000.
  • Real wages for human services workers have stagnated over the past two decades. Workers in human services-related industries earned about $40,000 in 2023 compared to the statewide average of $90,000—up about 3 percent versus 12 percent, respectively, since 2000. Importantly, real wages for Home Health Care Services, the largest human services industry, declined by as much as 6 percent since before the pandemic.
  • Women of color, many of whom are immigrants, make up the vast majority of the human services workforce. Home health aides, nursing assistants, and childcare workers—the occupations that make up the majority of the sector and are mostly held by women of color—receive the lowest wages of the sector and, as a result, experience higher rates of poverty and public benefit utilization than other individuals across New York.
  • More than half of human services workers across New York State earn wages that are below the cost of living. Over 80 percent of human services worker households with children earn below the cost of living.
  • Human services workers are underpaid by as much as $20,000 per worker each year. The cost of living for a single adult New Yorker is about $60,000 per worker per year–or about $27-$29/hour on a full-time basis. This is much higher than the average annual wage of about $40,000 for workers in a human services-related industry.
  • Wages below the cost of living are widespread for the human services workforce throughout New York. Upstate New York is more affordable relative to the New York City area but generally there is still a gap between the cost of living and the wages human services workers earn throughout the state.

The report that follows first defines the “human services workforce” for the purposes of this analysis. Second, broad industry findings are presented that speak to the size, scale, and wages of human services-related industries in New York. Third, the report details the demographic and economic characteristics of the human services workforce in the state. Lastly, the report includes results from a wage-gap analysis that focuses on comparing the cost of living in the state to wages earned by the human services workforce. This brief also includes an appendix with detailed data and methodology notes.

There is no single or definitive definition of the human services workforce. The National Organization of Human Services (NOHS) describes human services as the prevention and remediation of problems experienced by individuals receiving social services. Services can include and are not limited to community mental health and substance abuse services; alternatives to incarceration and reentry services; food and nutrition assistance; family, child, and youth services; housing and shelter services; employment and workforce services; services for older adults; legal and victim assistance; and services for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Human services are provided in a number of settings, such as via social service agencies or community-based, residential, or institutional settings.

This analysis relies on publicly available data sources, including data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), namely, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), as well as the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). Within these data sources there is no clearly delineated "human services" employment category. Therefore, CUNY ISLG flagged individual industries and occupations as being human services related (see Appendix for a breakdown of specific industries and occupations). For example, the industry group "Home Health Care Services” was considered human services-related.

Over 800,000 people worked in a client-facing human services occupation across New York State in 2023.

It is also important to note that this analysis considers trends for human services industries and human services occupations, respectively. Industry-level analysis allows for an exploration of broad sector trends and includes data on private employmenti (which includes nonprofit organizations and excludes government employment), including, for example, Home Health Care Services, Services for the Elderly and Disabled, and Child Day Care Services. Nearly a million people across New York are privately employed by a human-services related industry. Occupation-level data, in turn, allow for deeper insight into specific human services related occupations, including home health aides, nursing assistants, and childcare workers. Over 800,000 people worked in a client-facing human services occupation across New York State in 2023. The occupation data are not broken down by employer type (at least at state level) – so the occupation-level trends in this analysis, unless otherwise noted, represent averages across both private (including nonprofit) and government workers. Lastly, because this analysis relies on publicly available data, it is limited to the industry and occupation categories and definitions employed by the BLS and the Census Bureau. For a full list of industries and occupations included in CUNY ISLG’s human services definition, see the appendix.

Employment and Wage Trends Across the Human Services Sector

There were nearly one million workers across New York State working in a human services-related industry in 2023, representing about one in nine employees (Figure 1). Human services employment has almost doubled since 2000 and has grown as a share of the state's employment (7 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 2023) (Figure 1). Within the sector, three human services-related industries make up most of the employment: Home Health Care Services, Services for the Elderly and Disabled, and Nursing Care Facilities (Figure 2).

As Figure 3 shows, while private employment in the state grew by about 14 percent since 2000, employment across human services-related industries grew 89 percent. The Home Health Care Services industry was a driver of this growth; employment grew fourfold in the past few decades. Even as overall employment dipped during the pandemic, Home Health Care Services employment remained steady. Recent year over year data shows continued employment growth in Home Health Care Services, Services for the Elderly and Disabled, and Child Day Care Services.

While employment grew for human services-related industries, wages remained stagnant. Between 2000 and 2023, average real wages for all private employment across New York State grew by 12 percent but just 3 percent in human services-related industries (Figure 4). Notably, the largest human services-related industries (Services for the Elderly and Disabled, Home Health Care Services, Child Day Care Services) have the lowest average wages, around $35,000 annually (Figure 5).

Not only are wages for human services-related industries much lower than the state average, Home Health Care Services—the industry with the most employment growth—saw real wages decline by 10 percent since 2000 (Figure 6). Concerningly, following high levels of inflation in 2022, real wages dropped between 2022 and 2023, especially for human services-related industries (Figure 6).

Not only are wages for human services-related industries much lower than the state average, Home Health Care Services—the industry with the most employment growth—saw real wages decline by 10 percent since 2000

Occupation Trends Across the Workforce

In the previous section, we examined trends for entire industries to get a sense of the sector. However, those data include employment and wages for all workers, including management and executives, skewing average wages higher than what typical workers in a given industry earn. In order to drill down into wages typically paid to direct service providers, we use occupation-level data to examine wages, and custom-calculations of ACS data to create demographic and economic profiles for these workers.ii

Home Health Aides make up most of New York State's human services workforce (Figure 7). Nearly 690,000 New Yorkers work as a Home Health Aide, Nursing Assistant, or Childcare Worker.iii These positions make up 80 percent of the human services workforce and are among the lowest paid across these occupations (Figure 8).

Notably, wage growth potential is particularly limited for Home Health Aides and Childcare Workers. As Figure 9 shows, the spread between entry wages and experienced wages (10th and 90th percentiles, respectively) is narrow—about $10,000 to $15,000—with wages topping out well under $50,000. In other words, Home Health Aides or Childcare Workers will likely never earn higher wages in those occupations, despite advancing level of experience and skill. Nursing Assistants fair somewhat better—experienced staff may earn around $55,000.

Data from the American Community Survey (ACS) allows us to understand the demographic and economic conditions of those who work in human services-related occupations. These data are very detailed; for example, we can explore race and ethnicity, immigration status, health insurance utilization, and other characteristics; however, data, are limited to what is available in the ACS. As Table 1 below shows, it is mainly women of color, many of whom are immigrants, that make up the human services labor force (the three occupations profiled make up most of the workforce). Due to low wages, many workers in these occupations have higher poverty rates, higher public benefit utilization rates, and lower health care insurance coverage than other New Yorkers.

In other words, Home Health Aides or Childcare Workers will likely never earn higher wages in those occupations, despite advancing level of experience and skill.

Cost of Living in New York

As detailed above, human services workers earn well below average wages statewide. This suggests that many may struggle to afford essentials such as housing, food, and healthcare. In New York, human services workers are overwhelmingly women of color, many of whom are immigrants and face daily barriers alongside low wages. Below, we estimate the gap between average human services wages and the cost of living as defined by two methodologies: the Self-Sufficiency Standard and the Living Wage Calculator,iv as well as 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Threshold. (See Appendix for threshold methodologies).

The figure below details the wage thresholds associated with each cost-of-living methodology and 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Threshold, comparing those thresholds to average human services wages.v The gap is nearly $20,000 between the true cost of living and the average human services annual wage of about $40,000. Notably, however, childcare workers and home health aides, two of the top three most common human service occupations, earn less than the overall average, with entry level childcare workers making an average of $30,590 per year (as noted in Figure 9 above). When looking at the Self Sufficiency Standard, a one-person the overall average, with entry level childcare workers making an average of $30,590 per year (as noted in Figure 9 above). When looking at the Self Sufficiency Standard, a one-person household in New York City, for example, must earn $59,394 per year to meet the Standard—about $19,000 more than average human services-related industry wages. Likewise, the Living Wage Calculator estimates that $55,869 is needed to support a one-person household in New York City—a gap of about $15,000 from average wages. Lastly, the gap between average human services-related industry wages and 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Threshold is just under $20,000 per employee per year, on average.

In addition to understanding the gap between wages and cost of living, Table 2 estimates how much of the human services workforce earns below the cost of living. Given variation in both wages and costs across the state, Figure 11 controls for regional variation (uses county-level wages and costs of living data). In other words, we compare wages earned by human services workers in counties across the state and compare those wages to the relative cost of living in that region. We find that just over half of those who work in a human services occupation statewide earn below the cost of living as defined by the Self-Sufficiency Standard and Living Wage Calculator, and up to 88 percent earn less than 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Threshold. Even in lower cost areas of the state, wages for the human services workforce do not meet the cost of living for a substantial portion of workers (see Figure 11).

The benefits of increasing wages are clear: higher wages would help retain skilled workers, attract new talent, and ultimately improve the quality and sustainability of services for New Yorkers.

Conclusion

Human services workers are crucial to the wellbeing of all New Yorkers, offering a wide range of services that support the most vulnerable members of community, including the elderly, people with disabilities, and those facing mental health and substance use challenges. Human services workers provide direct care, connect individuals to resources, and strengthen communities. Despite this crucial, and often demanding, job, the majority of these workers earn less than the cost of living. The lowest paid human services occupations—home health aides, nursing assistants, and childcare workers—are underpaid by as much as $20,000 annually per employee, across hundreds of thousands of employees.

Closing this gap is costly. But the benefits of increasing wages are clear: higher wages would help retain skilled workers, attract new talent, and ultimately improve the quality and sustainability of services for New Yorkers. Forthcoming analyses from CUNY ISLG will provide deeper insight into how increasing wages for the human services workforce would impact individuals, their communities, and government—that is, comparing the cost of increasing wages against savings to government, and the benefits accrued to individuals and their communities because of higher incomes. Stay tuned for these and other analyses on how New York and other states can better support the people and services that keep our communities running.

Acknowledgements

This report is the culmination of many important partnerships. First and foremost, we want to acknowledge the Bring Up Minimum Pay (BUMP) campaign for funding this important work. This project would not be possible without their commitment to using data to quantify the need for investment in the human services workforce and the benefits of paying these workers a true cost of living.

We are thankful for our CUNY ISLG colleagues who contributed at every stage; this report would have been impossible without guidance from Senior Fellow Dean Fuleihan, and editing, design, and release support from our communications staff, Carla Sinclair and Alisa Orlowsky.

Last but not least, we thank Design for Progress and its co-founders Paragini Amin and Chris Edley as well as their partners at Thought Driven Development for their tireless creativity and help with the design of the static and interactive template used for this report.

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