Earnings of CUNY Graduates
- CUNY graduates working in New York State earned a combined $57 billion annually ($67,000 on average) in 2019 – $28.6 billion more than students would have earned without a post-secondary degree.
- CUNY graduates working in New York paid an estimated $4.2 billion in State income taxes in 2019.
| Degree | Graduates working in NYS | Total Earnings | Average Earnings |
| Certificate | 3,365 | $205 M | $60,800 |
| Associate’s | 278,251 | $15.332 B | $55,100 |
| Baccalaureate | 401,691 | $26.176 B | $65,165 |
| Master’s | 157,089 | $14.741 B | $93,840 |
| Doctoral | 6,002 | $538 M | $89,625 |
| TOTAL | 846,398 | $56.992 B | $67,334 |
$57 BILLION
in annual earnings
$4.2 BILLION
in State income taxes paid
Chart 1
*Doctoral degrees and certificates.
CUNY
CUNY enrolled over 265,000 students in 1,900 academic programs in the fall of 2019, including nearly 41,000 freshmen. In the academic year 2019–2020, CUNY granted 9,600 graduate and professional degrees, 27,300 baccalaureate degrees, 18,900 associate’s degrees, 340 certificates and 1,100 advanced certificates.
CUNY is an engine of social mobility:
- Over 80 percent of incoming CUNY undergraduates are New York City high school graduates;
- 85 percent are people of color;
- 35 percent are foreign-born.
- Half of students come from households with incomes below $30,000.
A 2020 Brookings Institution study ranked six of CUNY’s senior colleges and six community colleges among the top 10 nationwide in promoting social mobility, moving students from lower-income backgrounds into the middle class.
CUNY Graduates in the Workforce
- More than 1 million graduates from CUNY in the last thirty years (1991 through 2020).
- The number of graduates increased by almost 150 percent in the last three decades (54,500 in 2020 compared to 22,400 in 1991).
- The number of graduates increased by 42 percent just in the last decade.
- 64 percent of CUNY graduates are persons of color.
Chart 2
- 79 percent of CUNY graduates work full time in New York State after graduation.
- Nearly 850,000 CUNY graduates work full time in New York State, representing:
- Approximately 10 percent of the total private-sector workforce in the state;
- 17 percent of the workforce with higher education;
- One third of those with an Associate’s degree and 18 percent of those with a Bachelor’s.
CUNY Graduates as Percent of NYers with Degree
Chart 3
7,300
Full-time faculty
12,300
Part-time faculty
25,000
Additional staff
265,000+
Students enrolled
64%
POC
64%
Women
79% OF CUNY GRADUATES
work full time in NYS after graduation
Chart 4
Half of incoming students are from households with incomes below $30,000
Sources & Notes
This analysis was performed using graduate counts provided by the CUNY Office of Institutional Research and Census data on Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO). PSEO provides data on employment, earnings, and place of employment of graduates from individual CUNY schools and degree programs one, three, and ten years after graduation. We estimated the share of graduates working in New York 10-30 years after graduation based on the rate at which they migrated out of state over the first ten years after receiving a degree. Average earnings were calculated as the average of first quartile, median and third quartile of earnings distribution at school level as reported by PSEO, weighted by number of graduates. Average earnings and taxes paid were estimated using personal income tax data provided by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, taking into account differences in individual earnings and family income. All dollar values are adjusted to 2019 dollars. Full-time employment was defined as at least three-quarters of a year. Median earnings for those without a post-secondary degree is calculated using American Community Survey 2019 data.