Create 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030
Mayor Eric Adams
Business & Economy Active Updated Jul 7, 2026
The Black employment gap
Black unemployment in New York City hit 8.8% in May 2026, up half a point in a year and well above the 6.6% national Black rate, while white New Yorkers were the only group to gain employment. The metro area's Black-white unemployment gap, 5.6 percentage points as of late 2025, is the widest of any major US metro. Slow private hiring, federal layoffs, and the DEI retreat are unwinding two years of progress, and City Hall's response so far is a racial equity plan and hiring halls rather than targeted money.
The story so far
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Jul 7, 2026 Latest
Black unemployment reached 8.8% in May 2026 against 6.6% nationally, per state comptroller data reported by The City Reporter, and white New Yorkers were the only demographic group to gain employment over the year. The Center for New York City Affairs put the metro Black-white gap at 5.6 percentage points as of the third quarter of 2025, the widest among major US metro areas; employment among bachelor's-degree holders fell 3.6 points in a year, and analysts tied 277,000 permanent federal layoffs and the corporate DEI retreat to the slide in Black employment.
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Apr 7, 2026
DiNapoli's labor force update put Black unemployment at 8.9% for 2025, more than three times the white rate; white New Yorkers were the only group under 3%. The national Black rate was 6.9%, and the report noted the city's community hiring office publishes no data on actual job placements.
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Apr 6, 2026
Mayor Mamdani released a Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan covering 45 agencies and more than 200 goals, among them connecting New Yorkers in high-unemployment communities to quality jobs, citing a white median household net worth of about $276,900 versus $18,870 for Black households. City & State reported the next day that the Law Department had stripped explicit DEI references from the plan to duck Trump administration legal challenges.
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Jan 5, 2026
The Center for New York City Affairs' 2026 outlook found the New York metro had the country's largest Black-white unemployment gap among prime-age workers, 8.6% versus 3.0% over the year through the third quarter of 2025, and the steepest one-year rise in Black unemployment of any major metro, up 2.7 points. Employment among bachelor's-degree holders dropped 3.6 percentage points in a year.
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Dec 23, 2025
The city added roughly 40,000 jobs in 2025, far under the 150,000 City Hall had forecast, with nearly all gains in low-wage, tax-funded health care. Black unemployment reached 9% over the summer, and the Center for New York City Affairs put the Black-white gap at 6 percentage points, erasing much of two years of progress; its economists saw the return of last hired, first fired.
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Jun 3, 2025
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported city youth unemployment of 13.2% in 2024, and 23.8% for Black 16-to-24-year-olds, nine points higher than in 2019 and the worst of any group.
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Jul 23, 2024
City Hall celebrated progress: Black unemployment fell from 10.7% at the start of 2022 to 7.3% by July 2024, a drop of nearly a third the Adams administration credited to 24 hiring halls that had drawn more than 7,200 job seekers. The same release restated the mayor's pledge of 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030.
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Mar 27, 2024
Mayor Adams launched Jobs NYC: monthly hiring halls in each borough, a jobs portal, and reduced degree requirements for city positions, aimed at communities with high unemployment. First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright put Black unemployment at 9.3% against 3% for white New Yorkers and called the difference unacceptable.
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May 22, 2023
The City Reporter put numbers on the divide: 12.2% Black unemployment against 1.3% for white workers, almost 100,000 Black New Yorkers out of work, while the national Black rate slid to a record-low 4.7%. "The difference between the unemployment rates for Black non-Hispanic workers and white non-Hispanic workers is at the widest it has been in this century," economist James Parrott said.
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Apr 27, 2023
The Center for New York City Affairs found white unemployment in the city fell to 1.3% in the first quarter of 2023, the lowest since at least 2000, while Black unemployment rose, leaving the Black-white gap the widest of this century. The center said the gap last reached a similar level in the first half of 2009, in the wreckage of the Great Recession.
On the record
The checkable commitments in this fight, tracked until they are kept or broken.
40% of labor hours on an estimated $1.2 billion in city contracts will go to NYCHA residents and high-poverty ZIP codes
Mayor Eric Adams (community hiring initiative)
Release a final Citywide Racial Equity Plan after a 30-day public feedback window
Mayor Zohran Mamdani
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