Why It Matters: New York is struggling to fill job vacancies.
New York City is the nation’s largest municipal employer, but has struggled recently to recruit and retain employees. As of September 2023, there were over 20,000 vacant municipal jobs, according to Council data.
The vacancies have caused delays in services that have affected the most vulnerable New Yorkers. For example, only 14 percent of applications for cash assistance were processed within the required 30 days during a four-month period last year, compared with 95 percent in 2019, according to data from the preliminary Mayor’s Management Report. City officials say they have recently hired 1,000 workers and reduced the delays in processing benefits.
“The pandemic and an unequal recovery have exacerbated economic hardships, while a lack of capacity within our city agencies has undermined access to assistance that families could once rely on,” Ms. Adams said in her address on Wednesday. “This does not have to be our reality.”
How the Plan Would Work: Partly by hiring CUNY students and seasonal workers.
Working with its largest municipal labor union, District Council 37, the city would fund an employment initiative starting this year that would create a pathway to city jobs for those at work force development programs at the City University of New York and other institutions. Participants would receive help with civil service test preparation and exam fees.
The second part of the effort would connect workers who are typically underemployed, including young people and asylum seekers, with seasonal city jobs such as cleanup crews or internships in various industries.
Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, said in a statement that the initiative would be “an engine of economic opportunity and upward mobility for New Yorkers of all backgrounds.”
Background: Ms. Adams pointed to a lack of affordable housing as another reason people are leaving New York.
Ms. Adams has become one of the most vocal critics of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration. She has criticized its management of the city budget and its policies on housing and criminal justice while proposing alternate solutions.
On Wednesday, Ms. Adams continued her critique, saying that “years of understaffing and underinvestment have weakened critical agencies.” She said the Council would conduct its own evaluations and issue “report cards” to measure agencies’ performance in delivering services.
Ms. Adams noted that housing costs were forcing Black New Yorkers to leave the city in disproportionate numbers. Over the last two decades, she said, the city has lost 10 percent of its Black population, or nearly 200,000 people. “Without a path to build equity, longtime New Yorkers are moving elsewhere to build their legacies,” Ms. Adams said.
She called on the city to develop more housing, including by repurposing sites like the Aqueduct Racetrack in her Queens district and even by building on top of libraries. She said the Council would seek to change zoning rules to make it easier to use housing vouchers in private developments and would consider ways to lower the income level required to qualify for affordable housing.
Among her other priorities, Ms. Adams named mental health, maternal health, child care and addressing a surge in hate crimes. Regarding the influx of more than 180,000 migrants since the spring of 2022, Ms. Adams said the city needed “greater collaboration” to “strengthen” its response. She added that the Council would create a “new arrivals” task force to develop new ideas to help migrants integrate into the city.
“The Council is full of good policy ideas that can provide important solutions to our city’s challenges,” she said. “But laws and policies are only as good as their implementation.”
How the Mayor Responded: Mr. Adams said he and the speaker had the same priorities.
Mayor Adams, who attended the speech, has argued that his efforts to manage the migrant crisis and help the city recover from the coronavirus pandemic have been successful. He has embraced the slogan “jobs are up, crime is down” when evaluating his tenure so far.
But the recovery has been uneven. While there has been private sector job growth, much of it has been among low-wage jobs. Much of the wage gains have gone to higher earners. And the poverty rate reached 23 percent in 2022, a sharp increase compared with 2021.
The mayor, who is facing low-approval ratings and whose campaign is under investigation by federal authorities, said his administration had “worked in partnership” with the Council speaker to make the city more livable.
“The priorities the speaker laid out today are our shared priorities: child care, housing, women’s health care and more,” the mayor said in a statement, adding, “We look forward to digging into the speaker’s proposals.”
