February 8, 2013. One of New York City’s biggest challenges is providing a sufficient number of decent job opportunities to enable its citizens to provide for their families and offer hope of a better life for their children. The city’s pronounced income polarization is fundamentally rooted in the job market. Economic and labor market changes over the years have severely limited the availability of good jobs that provide reasonable health and retirement benefits. These changes, which threaten the survival of New York as a middle class city, are not dictated by technology, markets, competition or globalization. They are shaped by those forces, but economic change is determined by a host of public and private policy choices. In testimony submitted to the New York City Council Committees on Education and Finance, James A. Parrott, FPI’s Deputy Director and Chief Economist, stated that the school bus drivers’ and matrons’ strike is a dramatic example of the need to make the right choice in favor of good jobs and opportunities for New Yorkers without higher education.