{"id":204693,"date":"2026-04-21T13:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204693\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T13:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:45:07","slug":"nyc-government-has-nearly-14000-job-vacancies-is-city-hall-better-off-not-filling-them-amid-a-budget-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204693\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC government has nearly 14,000 job vacancies. Is City Hall better off not filling them amid a budget crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The massive $5.4 billion budget shortfall has both City Council and City Hall scrambling for <\/a>savings, with each stretching the bounds of creativity \u2014 and, in some cases, reality.<\/p>\n

While the initial responses to each other\u2019s preliminary budgets gave hostile vibes, the sentiments seem to have softened slightly. In recent weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appeared together at public events and publicly supported Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s proposed pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a> on second homes worth over $5 million owned by people who are not New York City residents.<\/p>\n

But despite the unpopularity of a \u201clast resort\u201d property tax hike in Mayor Mamdani\u2019s preliminary budget, there was something perhaps more puzzling in the City Council\u2019s response: Factoring in over $800 million in budget savings for vacant city jobs, even though the council still intends to fill the positions.<\/p>\n

To try and make sense of it all, amNewYork spoke with NYU Wagner Professor of Public and Nonprofit Financial Management and Director of Finance Specialization Thad Calabrese.\n<\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s one of those things in which there\u2019s a kernel of truth, but the truth is actually much more complicated,\u201d Calabrese said.\n<\/p>\n

The city currently has a municipal vacancy rate of about 4.3%; as of Jan. 31, there were 13,294 vacancies out of the 307,777 authorized positions in city government.\n<\/p>\n

The vacancy rate varies greatly across agencies; those with the highest rates include the Department of Homeless Services (26.36%), Department of Correction (18.43%), the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (17.46%), Department of Finance (14.64%) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (14.06%).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Calabrese told amNewYork that it\u2019s easy to see the savings from vacant city positions on the surface.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u200amath is quite simple, right?\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cFewer employees means your personnel expenses will be lower and for New York City, like a lot of cities, a huge chunk of their annual spending are on these personnel costs. So, to the extent that you can keep them vacant, you will reduce your spending in the current year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But time and again, city positions have consistently proved worth more than their budgeted salaries, both in cost and revenue.\n<\/p>\n

For example, a job in the Department of Finance may generate more revenue for the city than its budgeted payroll, while a job in the Department of Homeless Services may cost more than its salary. However, an agency like the Department of Homeless Services, focused on providing resources to homeless individuals, may have secondary positive impacts on the budget, such as increasing efficiency and reducing spending in other areas.<\/p>\n

Calabrese told amNewYork that it\u2019s difficult to measure a municipal job\u2019s value in definite terms.\n<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThe actual savings from vacancies oftentimes do not translate into the full amount that its advocates say it will, and part of it is because you have second-order effects or unintended consequences that they\u2019re not thinking about,\u201d Calabrese said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The high vacancy rates, however, are having a major impact on the city\u2019s bottom line in one particular area: Overtime.\u00a0In 2025, a NYC Payroll report from the\u00a0Empire Center<\/a> found that city employees received $2.9 billion in overtime pay.<\/p>\n

Filling the vacant positions would likely lower overtime costs, but the hiring process itself is slow.\u00a0Combined with the long wait times to get hired for municipal jobs, City Council Chair of the Committee of Civil Service and Labor Shirley Albdebol (D-Bronx) said the municipal hiring crisis would require creative and immediate solutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It takes a long time between taking the exam, being called off the list and even if they\u2019re called off the list, it takes six months to get hired and be in place.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Aldebol said she had concerns.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s happening here?\u201d Aldebol said. \u201cBecause if someone has to wait a year and a half to even get hired, they\u2019re going to go find a job someplace else. So, we\u2019re potentially losing a lot of talent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The massive $5.4 billion budget shortfall has both City Council and City Hall scrambling for savings, with each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7739,14312,81028,81029,9,11,10,81030],"class_list":{"0":"post-204693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-city-agencies","10":"tag-city-jobs","11":"tag-dcas","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-nyu-wagner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}