NYC Budget Cost Estimate for Closing The Human Services Pay Equity Gap
This CNYCA budget brief estimates the City budget cost to provide salary parity for the City-contracted nonprofit human services workforce. The cost (estimated at $965 million to $1.35 billion, which could be phased in over three years) is not insignificant, but neither is it unmanageable. What is untenable is to allow this inequity to persist.
The Center’s January 2025 report, “Moving Beyond COLAs to Salary Parity for New York City’s Nonprofit Human Services Workers,” documented that the highly educated human services workforce, predominantly comprising women of color, earn 25-30 percent less than their similarly educated counterparts in City government human services agencies.
The 2025 report noted that these pay inequities result directly from City contracting processes that consistently underfund nonprofit service providers. Unlike market-driven industries, pay for nonprofit human services workers is determined entirely by City budget and procurement policies that have prioritized low cost over fair compensation. Achieving salary parity for human services workers is not a matter of raising the wage floor for the lowest-paid workers. Rather, the most profound compensation inequities are among highly professional and experienced workers, those with a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
The January 2025 report recommended establishing salary parity by aligning pay for human services workers with City agency job titles and pay levels to ensure parity with public sector employees performing comparable work. City government workers are covered by long-standing collective bargaining agreements that compensate workers based on level of education, responsibility, and experience on the job.
Recent City Council legislation proposes to implement a human services pay parity requirement. Intro. No. 452 mandates that City human services contracts include sufficient funding to enable nonprofit employers to compensate their workers on a par with City employees “with comparable education and responsibilities.”