New York City Mayor Eric Adams has taken to the streets in an effort to help fill the more than 20,000 vacancies in New York’s municipal agencies.
Following the Covid-19 lockdowns, New York City is facing a “vacancy crisis” across many city agencies. Overall, the city vacancy rate sits at approximately eight percent, but in many high-demand agencies, the percentage is much higher with the Department of Social Services’ Child Support Services claiming a 46.5% vacancy rate while the agency charged with protecting New York City’s cybersecurity has a 36% vacancy rate, according to a report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. (RELATED: Study: 42% Of Coronavirus Related Layoffs Could Be Permanent)
Adams, who was seen handing out flyers with his staff promoting a job fair at York College, stated it was up to his administration to “aggressively” advertise the many vacancies within the government to prospective employees.
“Often times we talk about vacancies in city agencies. But then if you ask the people in government that talk about the vacancies … you ask them, ‘but what are you doing about filling them?’ They don’t have an answer,” Adams stated, according to the New York Post.
Eric Adams personally recruiting on the streets to fill vacant NYC jobs https://t.co/wscs9Nu1PL pic.twitter.com/f6BcVhepQp
— New York Post (@nypost) April 30, 2023
New York is not alone in this issue, with many state and local governments across the country reporting a slow recovery in their post-pandemic hiring, despite an infusion of federal funds to assist in the crisis, Lander revealed, citing data from the Center for American Progress. (RELATED: States And Localities, Flush With COVID Cash Are Showering Corporate America With Handouts: REPORT)
In New York however, the problem was exacerbated when former Mayor Bill de Blasio implemented a hiring freeze at most city agencies a year before lockdowns, Lander said in his report. “Even after it became clear that substantial federal Covid relief would fill pandemic municipal budget gaps, the de Blasio Administration shifted first to a “3-for-1″ rule, meaning that agencies would be allowed to hire one employee for every three vacancies it carried, later lowered to 2-for-1,” Lander continued.
“While it is important to identify positions that are no longer needed, current vacancies appear to be driven far more by where there is private sector competition for workers, rather than by any assessment of need or priority,” Lander said. “The result is a severe lack of capacity to get things done in mission-critical areas, from creating new housing to providing services to low-income children to collecting the revenue the City needs to function.”