New campaign engages CUNY to quantify need in human services

Human service organizations and advocacy organizations seeking higher wages for nonprofit workers have partnered with the City University of New York Institute for State & Local Governance to quantify the need for investment in the human services workforce.

The anti-poverty campaign known as BUMP, short for “Bring up minimum pay,” has also asked the institute to quantify the “benefits of a true cost of living,” according to its third quarter update. BUMP, a campaign pushing to raise the minimum wage floor for the sector, is seeking to have it reflect the true cost of living in New York state. Although many nonprofit workers help bring other New Yorkers out of poverty, many live in poverty themselves at their current salaries.

“I've had such heart-wrenching conversations with some of our staff who did not want to leave Good Shepherd Services, but felt that they had no choice because of their own obligations to their own family members,” said Michelle Yanche, executive director of Good Shepherd Services, one of the campaign members and a member of the New York Nonprofit Media Advisory Board. 

“We are still finding it extremely challenging, in some cases impossible, to attract staff to take some of our roles. The salaries are just too low,” she said. “It makes it impossible to retain staff as they gain expertise.”

Preliminary data findings from the campaign’s third quarter update, which was released in September on its website, showed that 12% of workers in the state are employed in the human services sector and that the three largest human services industries have the lowest wages. The findings also showed that since 2000, human services wages rose 3%, while the private sector’s rose 12% over the same period. 

In 2023, a report was released by United Way of New York City that found the true cost of living can go up to $150,000 in some parts of the five boroughs and that 50% of working-age households do not have incomes that cover basic needs, which include food, housing, healthcare, and transportation. 

Government contracts do not cover the day-to-day expenses and have remained the same, while private sector wages have grown by 12%. Because of this, the nonprofit sector has suffered from high turnover and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff, which has put essential services in jeopardy

Advocates say the poor pay in the human services field has deep racial and gender disparities, with 1 in 9 New Yorkers working in the human services sector, and being overwhelmingly made up of women and people of color. 

“It becomes a domino effect,” said Keith Little, founder and principal of Kemili Solutions, and who is also a campaign member. “If you're not paying the true cost of living, individuals will either have to leave the sector and find jobs where they can make money, or they can stay in the sector and they have two and three jobs.”

In the past couple of decades, home healthcare services employment has grown by 400%. While home health care services, such as home health aides, child care workers and nursing assistants, which are the largest human services-related industries (they make up about 80% of human services workers), are paid the lowest wages. Childcare workers are the lowest on the pay scale, earning an average of $37,970 annually.

“Cost of living adjustments, which both state and local governments tend to do, I think they're a short-term solution,” Little added. “What we're talking about with this BUMP campaign is looking at some type of permanent fix with the idea of establishing a (pay) floor, and then having the COLA complement that in some ways or supplement that in some ways down the road.”

The campaign was started in the fall of 2023 by Little and former New York City Deputy Mayor Emma Wolfe and today, in addition to Good Shepherd, includes Citizens’ Committee for Children and The New York Foundling.