New York City agencies will be forced to sharply curtail hiring by eliminating roughly half of all vacant civilian positions, a dramatic belt-tightening move that threatens to further strain the delivery of city services.
The cuts will mean the city will not fill roughly 4,700 vacancies, according to estimates provided by City Hall. It will not affect teachers nor uniformed vacancies in departments like police and fire.
In a letter sent Monday to city agency heads, Jacques Jiha, director of the Office of Management and Budget, cited a budget shortfall of nearly $3 billion in fiscal year 2024 as the driving factor behind the latest cost-cutting decision, Jiha explained.
City agencies were recently ordered to cut 3% from their budgets, a move that Jiha said will save the city more than $2.5 billion over the next two fiscal years.
Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for the mayor, said the new cuts are expected to save the city an additional $350 million a year.
The decision to cut open positions comes as the city struggles with high attrition that many city workers have blamed on a slow hiring process, low salaries, as well as a refusal by Mayor Eric Adams to consider a hybrid schedule for some municipal office employees.
Earlier this month, the state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued a report on the city’s troubling staffing crisis. As of August, the city’s workforce fell to below 282,000. DiNapoli said that the decline over the last two years measured over 6%, the largest decline in the city’s workforce since the Great Recession.
"Without the hardworking individuals who keep this city running, critical and essential services for our children and most vulnerable residents could be impacted,” DiNapoli warned.
The city’s investigation, law, city planning, and social service agencies are among those that have seen double-digit percent declines in staffing over the last two years, according to the comptroller.
At the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, a drop in affordable housing production was recently attributed to both increasing construction costs and “agency staffing challenges.”
There were roughly 12,000 vacant civilian jobs as of Oct. 31, according to an estimate from the Independent Budget Office
Aside from teachers and uniformed officers, the city will also exclude from the cuts any grant-funded, legally mandated, revenue generating positions as well as those that “support mayoral priorities,” Jiha said in his letter.
