CITY’S HIRING HALLS EXPAND OPTIONS TO INCLUDE PRIVATE FIRMS

The hiring halls the Adams administration has held to fill vacant municipal government jobs will start also offering career opportunities in the private sector, Mayor Adams announced Wednesday.

During a press conference in Brooklyn, Adams said the revamped career events will take place monthly in “economically disadvantaged” neighborhoods across all five boroughs. To boot, he said the city’s launching a new website, jobs.nyc.gov, where both job seekers and private employers can respectively apply and advertise for career openings.

“There needs to be entry ramps to prosperity, and that’s what this initiative is all about,” said Adams, who was speaking at the inaugural public-private hiring hall at a community center in Brownsville.

A press release from Adams’ office said the new hiring halls will involve nearly two dozen city agencies as well as “private partners.” The press release didn’t identify the partners, but an Adams spokeswoman said seven private companies — NYU Langone, BMS Health and Wellness, First Student Bus Co., Ultimate Care, Equus, Goodwill NY/NJ and Council for Airport Opportunity — are so far on board with having a presence at the hiring halls.

The private entities will be able to offer hiring hall applicants the chance to be school bus drivers and health care aides, according to City Hall.

Wednesday’s announcement comes on the heels of Adams easing a municipal government hiring freeze he put in place on the auspice that the city needed to offset his administration’s spending on the migrant crisis.

The announcement also comes as job vacancies across city government agencies remain high when compared with preCOVID-19 pandemic levels.

According to a report released by Comptroller Brad Lander this month, more than 16,000 budgeted city government jobs across dozens of agencies are sitting vacant. Lander’s report found the total city government headcount is 284,330, significantly below the more than 300,000 municipal workers the city had before COVID.

The mayor’s office noted the current city government job vacancy rate — 6.1% — is down slightly from a peak of 8.8% in November 2022.

Still, the continued dearth of city government workers comes as the mayor has permanently eliminated thousands of vacant municipal jobs as part of cost-cutting measures. According to the Lander study, Adams’ cost-saving initiatives have eliminated 5,516 municipal jobs over the current and next fiscal years across nearly all city agencies, including at the NYPD, the Education Department and the Sanitation Department.

Democrats in the City Council, who are in the midst of budget negotiations with the mayor, say the mayor’s cost-cutting has been needlessly deep and affected the delivery of municipal services.

Adams first launched the municipal hiring halls in February 2023, with a sole focus of filling city agency jobs. It’s unclear how many city jobs have been filled to date thanks to the hiring halls, though Adams’ administration said last May it had extended 1,000 “job offers” as part of them.