New York Market
What New York's universities are reporting about the job market their graduates enter
CUNY, NYU Stern, and the city's policy researchers are publishing outcomes data every year. Read together, it explains why experience — not credentials — has become the scarce asset.
Vanguard Collective · Editorial desk · August 10, 2026 · 8 min read
New York City is unusually well documented. Between the public university system, private business schools, and independent policy institutes, there is a steady stream of published outcomes data on what happens to graduates after they leave. We read it because we hire from it. Here is what stands out, with sources you can check yourself.
CUNY: scale, and a missing rung
The Center for an Urban Future's March 2026 report, From Degree to Career, examines how CUNY graduates fare in the city's labor market. Two findings anchor it: about two-thirds of graduates secure steady employment within a year, and just 12 percent of undergraduates complete a paid internship. The report's recommendation is to strengthen CUNY's employer partnerships and expand career-success programs — in other words, to rebuild the rung between classroom and career that the market has quietly removed.
For employers, that finding should read as an opportunity rather than a warning. A city with a very large, very diverse graduating population and a shortage of paid entry points is a city full of capable people who have not yet been given a measurable place to prove it. Any firm willing to train rather than filter has an advantage here.
NYU Stern: the documented end of the spectrum
At the other end, NYU Stern publishes a detailed undergraduate outcomes report. The Class of 2025 edition covers 716 graduates whose degrees were conferred between August 2024 and May 2025, with career outcomes collected up to six months after graduation. What makes it useful is not the headline placement rate — it is the transparency of method. A school that publishes how and when it measured its graduates sets a standard that employers should be held to as well.
The pattern underneath the reports
- Credentials have become table stakes. In a city this dense with graduates, the degree distinguishes almost no one.
- The paid internship has become the real gatekeeper, and most students never get one.
- Employers say they screen for experience while offering fewer of the roles that create it.
- Roles that build experience in public — customer-facing, measured, coached — sit outside that loop entirely.
“The scarce asset in New York is not a degree. It is a documented record of doing the work.”
How we use this
We hire without requiring prior industry experience because the data says requiring it would exclude most of the qualified people in this city. We source from the platforms candidates actually use, a person reads every resume, and the full process takes about a week. Then we build the record: paid training, daily coaching, visible metrics, and a written standard for promotion. Six months in, a Vanguard Collective team member has something the market values more than a line on a transcript — evidence.
If you research the local market yourself, start with the sources below. They are public, current, and more useful than any recruiter's summary — including ours.
