As Adams leans on city workforce, low staffing remains a challenge for some NYC agencies

A week before Mayor Eric Adams was indicted, as he sought to continue the business of running the city amid unprecedented chaos for his administration, he held a rare press conference to announce the release of New York City’s annual report card. In doing so, he brought along a woman recently connected with a job at the city Department of Transportation. She was a success story of the city’s hiring halls, which aim to connect job-searchers with city agencies in need of workers – and more recently, with private sector partners too.

“When we came into office, Black unemployment was four times the rate of white unemployment,” Adams said during a separate radio appearance a few days after the Sept. 16 press conference, where he again touted the hiring halls and noted his administration’s intention to focus them in communities with higher unemployment. “We have a 30% decrease in unemployment in Black and Hispanic communities. So we’re seeing things like these hiring halls are really working.”

But the report itself that Adams presented, an annual Charter-mandated tome known as the Mayor’s Management Report, showed much more of a mixed bag on the administration’s ongoing efforts to fill vacant positions in government, even as the city reports success at connecting New Yorkers to jobs through hiring halls and reforms aimed at lowering barriers to city jobs. Those continuing problems come to light as Adams rhetorically leans on the strength of the city’s workforce, making the case that the work of the city will continue even as he fights against his criminal indictment and for his political survival.

While some agencies reported improved performance on key indicators because of increased staffing, multiple agencies are still struggling to meet targets to deliver city services on-time and at desired levels. In multiple instances, staffing shortages, attrition and reduced headcount were blamed for those failures. The 558-page Mayor’s Management Report for fiscal year 2024 covers July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024.

Staffing up

The MMR did have bright spots showing where increased hiring in some areas led to better, faster delivery of city services. An increase in housing inspectors at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development contributed to improved response times for emergency and non-emergency problems, more housing maintenance problems addressed, and a 24% increase in violations issued. At the Department of Transportation, additional inspectors contributed to faster pothole repairs and a 24% increase in violations issued. Hiring more child protection specialists at the Administration for Children’s Services helped lower average caseloads, while the New York City Housing Authority was faster to respond to heat and rat complaints due in part to increased staffing and training.

Thanks to additional staff, the city health department increased its inspections of group child care centers by 13% over the past fiscal year. And at the Department of Veterans’ Services, staffing in the department’s housing unit was credited for a 5% increase in the number of veterans and families receiving homelessness prevention assistance. 

While staffing across many city agencies is down from pre-pandemic levels, personnel levels at the Human Resources Administration have started to climb back up over the past couple years. At the end of fiscal year 2024, personnel stood at 11,044, which is still short of the budgeted 12,134 positions. This past fiscal year, increased staffing helped HRA to improve on its processing times for cash assistance applications, though it remains well below targeted levels.

Falling short

While staffing up produced positive results in some areas, employee shortages resulted in service delivery failures in other areas. In some cases, the same agency experienced a mixed bag. Despite success in inspecting more group child care centers, “staffing gaps, high rates of attrition, and budgetary constraints” harmed the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s ability to conduct core tuberculosis control activities as cases have risen. As Crain’s New York Business previously reported, staffing shortages were blamed for decreases in both restaurant health inspections and pest control inspections. The mayor’s report notes that vacancies for pest control have started to be filled. On the other end of the department, “significant” shortages of both health department and NYPD staff have contributed to a 39% decrease in the number of individuals served by mental health co-response teams.

The Department of Veterans Services presents another mixed bag in the report. The department reports that staffing remains a problem, and even revised down the target number of events for department staff to attend to promote resources for veterans because of it. “Although DVS has gained increased support in several key functional areas in Fiscal 2024, DVS continues to be run with constricted resources due to staff attrition and reduced headcount, vacancies, and overall reduced budget,” the report reads. One of the smallest city agencies, the department reported 36 employees, just one position shy of what’s budgeted for fiscal year 2024, but five fewer positions than the department had in fiscal year 2020.

Elsewhere, staffing was blamed for slower or hindered services. The Taxi and Limousine Commission reported a 30% decrease in issuing Vision Zero-related summonses, attributed to staffing problems. Vacancies in the Department of Environmental Protection’s Police Division, which checks the security of the city’s drinking water supply, resulted in a decrease in enforcement activity. And the Department of Citywide Administrative Services fell short of a target to reduce 35,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency projects at public facilities, attributing it to construction and supply chain issues, as well as a high number of staff vacancies.

How to cut the vacancy rate

Adams, who promised a government of efficiency and getting stuff done, has been confronted with staffing problems since his tenure began. New York City’s full-time headcount swelled under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, but began to decline around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, under a temporary hiring freeze and later attrition, producing more than 26,000 vacancies at the end of his term, according to the city comptroller.

When Adams came in, he removed thousands of vacant positions across city agencies from the books as part of his budget cuts. Over that time, the actual citywide vacancy rate has fluctuated, not just because of shifts in actual staffing levels – which have recently increased – but because of continued decreases in the budgeted headcount. Following a recent citywide vacancy peak of more than 8% just before Adams came into office at the beginning of 2022, the citywide vacancy rate has now lowered to just over 5%, according to a dashboard maintained by the city comptroller’s office. That dashboard shows that as of the end of August, the city had 15,777 full-time vacancies. 

“We have made targeted investments to staffing across city agencies, which has allowed us to conduct more – and faster – housing inspections, provide additional support to child protection specialists, connect more New Yorkers to financial empowerment services, and more,” City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia wrote in an email, noting that earlier this year the city moved away from another recent cost-saving initiative – hiring restrictions. “Thanks to ‘Jobs NYC,’ we have connected thousands of New Yorkers with public-sector jobs across two dozen city agencies, particularly by bringing these opportunities to historically marginalized communities.”

As part of efforts to lower barriers to city hiring, Louis Molina, commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, said on a radio show with Adams earlier this month that the department has been reviewing qualifications for municipal jobs, removing college degree requirements where possible.

Some of Adams’ challengers have commented on the need to attract more people to city services. In addition to noting these problems when launching the staffing dashboard as comptroller, Lander’s campaign website also references modernizing civil service laws. State Sen. Jessica Ramos, who has also launched a campaign for mayor, told City & State that she would advocate for getting rid of civil service exam fees.