Marie Cari remembers the years before tech as a rotation of shifts that paid the minimum and left nothing over. "I was working a bunch of minimum-wage jobs, and it was tiring," she told The Chief after finishing a tuition-free IT program at Per Scholas in 2022. She took a job out of the course, and then the ladder moved. "After working for six months, they promoted me to software engineer," she said.

Her story is the best case, and the economics around it have shifted since she started. The federal government now projects that the classic help desk job, the one most free training programs aim graduates toward, will shrink over the next decade as companies hand password resets and printer tickets to chatbots. One rung up, the job that keeps an office network running is holding steady and paying about $14,000 more a year.

The straight answer for New Yorkers without a degree is that the network support specialist role is still a realistic target, with a national median of $76,220 in May 2025. The route runs through a free A+ program and a first hands-on support job, then the CompTIA Network+ or a registered state apprenticeship within roughly a year, because the entry-level help desk is the door into the field and the market is telling workers not to settle there.

What the Numbers Say About the Two Jobs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics splits the field in its Occupational Outlook Handbook into two occupations that most job boards blur together. User support specialists, the help desk workers who answer calls and walk employees through software problems, held 750,600 jobs in 2025 at a median of $61,860. Network support specialists, who test, troubleshoot and maintain the local and wide area networks those employees connect to, held 152,500 jobs at a median of $76,220.

The projections for 2025 to 2035 are where the paths split. BLS expects help desk jobs to fall 3 percent, a loss of 26,200 positions, and names the reason directly: "organizations continue to implement automated tools, such as chatbots, for troubleshooting." Network support is projected to grow 1 percent, adding about 1,900 jobs. Across both occupations the agency still expects around 48,700 openings a year, most of them to replace workers who retire or move into other occupations, which is why the field keeps hiring even while the headline number dips.

New York pays above the national line. The most recent state-level figures on the BLS occupational employment page for user support specialists, from May 2023, show 40,430 people doing that job in New York State at a mean annual wage of $70,320, and 38,860 in the New York, Newark and Jersey City metro area at a mean of $74,190. Those are averages rather than medians, and they are three years old, but they put the region at the top of the national pay scale for the entry rung.

On paper, BLS says network specialists "typically need an associate's degree," while also noting that applicants may qualify with "a high school diploma plus relevant information technology (IT) certifications." Training on the job runs moderate-term, and the agency describes a well-worn upward path: "Many computer support specialists advance to other information technology positions, such as information security analysts, network and computer systems administrators and software developers."

The Free Front Door in New York City

Per Scholas runs a tuition-free IT support training course in New York that lasts 13 to 15 weeks, full time from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon on weekdays, out of campuses at 804 East 138th Street in the Bronx and 630 Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn, with satellite sites at the JCC of Staten Island and in Cypress Hills. According to its course page, the next cohorts start October 13 on Staten Island and October 26 in the Bronx. Graduates sit for the CompTIA A+ and earn Google certificates in IT support and AI along the way. Applicants must be at least 18, live in New York City, hold a high school diploma or equivalent, be authorized to work and meet income guidelines, and the program points students to a $3,000 zero-interest loan through Ascent to cover living costs during the course.

"Per Scholas doesn't ask candidates to pay for their education in tuition, but we ask to pay for it in time," Sharlene Richemond, a senior associate of recruitment and admissions, told The Chief, which reported an 80 percent placement rate within a year. A Bronx Times column from May 2025 cited the same figure for full-time tech work.

NPower offers a second route for younger New Yorkers through its Tech Fundamentals program, which is free, runs up to 20 weeks virtually and is open to people aged 18 to 26 in Brooklyn and the wider city, as well as to veterans 21 and over. Students work toward the CompTIA A+ and Tech+, the Google IT Support certificate and, depending on region, a federal IT Generalist apprenticeship credential, and the program adds a paid internship and help with housing and childcare. When the U.S. Department of Labor awarded NPower a $4 million grant in 2024 to train another 8,656 young adults and veterans, CEO Bertina Ceccarelli said the work was about helping "non-pedigreed, underrepresented individuals and military-connected individuals receive IT skills," in a statement announcing the award.

The Certification Stack

Rung one: CompTIA A+

The current A+ version, launched March 25, 2025, is two exams, 220-1201 and 220-1202, each with up to 90 questions in 90 minutes and passing scores of 675 and 700 on a 900-point scale. CompTIA notes on its pricing explainer that "you will need two vouchers to pass two exams to certify," so a candidate paying out of pocket should budget for both, which is the main reason a program that covers the vouchers is worth the time it asks for. The certification is approved under the Defense Department's 8140 framework for technical support roles, which opens federal contractor jobs, and this version is expected to retire around 2028.

Rung two: CompTIA Network+

The Network+ exam, version N10-009, launched June 20, 2024, runs up to 90 questions in 90 minutes and requires a 720 to pass. CompTIA recommends that candidates already hold the A+ and have "9 to 12 months of hands-on experience in a junior network administrator or network support technician role," which is the honest timeline for the jump. The certification maps to roles such as technical support specialist, network operations specialist and system administrator.

The Apprenticeship Route

For workers who need a paycheck from the first day, New York's Department of Labor lists registered apprenticeship trades that cover the same ground. Computer Support Technician, Network Administrator and Network Engineer are each registered with a 12-month time-based option or a competency-based track, and each pairs apprentices with a journeyworker at a one-to-one ratio. The department's 2026 apprenticeship booklet counts "nearly 17,000 active apprentices in New York State," 3,050 of them outside construction, and says "over 40% of Registered Apprenticeship programs are in emerging fields like IT, Health Care and Advanced Manufacturing."

An apprenticeship and a certification are not competing choices. A worker who finishes Per Scholas or NPower with the A+ in hand is the kind of candidate an employer sponsoring a Network Administrator apprenticeship is looking for, and the year of supervised work counts toward the experience CompTIA recommends before Network+.

The Honest Math on Year One

Per Scholas says its New York graduates earn an average first-job salary of $41,000, and it tells applicants plainly that remote roles are hard to land without two or more years of experience. The Chief reported that positions in the fields the program trains for start at an average of $25 an hour. Both figures sit well below the medians above, and the gap is the point of planning the second rung before taking the first job.

A first year that works looks like an on-site support role in a hospital, a school district, a law firm or a property management company, with the A+ already earned, Network+ study running in the evenings, and a conversation with a manager about network tickets as soon as the help desk queue is under control. Readers who want to see where the ladder goes after network support can start with our reporting on earn-while-you-learn cyber apprenticeships and on the data center technician jobs growing alongside AI, two paths that build directly on time spent inside a working network.

Cari spent six months at the entry rung before her promotion. The BLS projections suggest the workers who follow her should plan on spending about that long there too, with Network+ already on the calendar for month twelve.