Photographer: Adam Gray\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — More than 74,000 people, with an average age of 28, have applied for\u00a0roles in Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new administration. \u00a0Those figures are\u00a0both a measure of\u00a0enthusiasm for New York City\u2019s incoming mayor and a sign of\u00a0how tough\u00a0the job market is\u00a0for young people in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
Young voters and volunteers fueled the 34-year-old Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0fast rise from a relatively unknown Queens assemblyman to mayor-elect\u00a0of America\u2019s largest city. A lot of them had time on their hands:\u00a0New Yorkers aged 16 to 24\u00a0faced a 13.2% unemployment rate in 2024, 3.6 percentage points higher than in 2019, according to\u00a0a May report\u00a0from the New York state comptroller.<\/p>\n
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New York City had a 5.8% unemployment rate\u00a0overall in August,\u00a01.3 percentage points above\u00a0the US average. The city added roughly 25,000\u00a0jobs this year through September, compared with about 106,000\u00a0during the same period in 2024, according to city data.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0campaign pledge\u00a0to lower the cost of living in New York\u00a0resonated with voters struggling to find jobs\u00a0and establish themselves\u00a0at a time when rents\u00a0have stayed high\u00a0and income growth has slowed.\u00a0Now he\u2019s looking to hire an unspecified number of roles across 60 agencies, 95 mayoral offices and\u00a0more than 250\u00a0boards and commissions,\u00a0with senior roles a priority,\u00a0according to his transition team.<\/p>\n
The typical size of the New York City mayoral staff \u2014\u00a0commissioners, communications, operations and community affairs \u2014\u00a0is about 1,100, according Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit finance watchdog.\u00a0City government in total hired 39,455 people in 2024, according to New York City data.<\/p>\n
Applications for roles in Mamdani\u2019s administration have come from workers of all experience levels and from a wide range of backgrounds and industries, said Maria Torres-Springer, co-chair of the mayor-elect\u2019s transition team. About\u00a020,000 of the applicants came from out of state.<\/p>\n
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When Barack Obama was elected\u00a0US\u00a0president in 2008, workers submitted more than 300,000 job applications to his administration. Blair Levin, who co-led the technology transition team for Obama, said he received around 3,000 of those resumes. He whittled the pool down to 75, a relatively easy task because\u00a0he\u00a0needed applicants with\u00a0specific tech and economics\u00a0skills, he said.<\/p>\n
Without invoking the term \u201cAI,\u201d Torres-Springer said the applications would be filtered using \u201cthe typical technology that any big corporation would have in an applicant-tracking system.\u201d The resumes will then be sorted and matched to different agencies.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s avid use of social media, which helped him connect with young people during his campaign, has continued into his\u00a0transition efforts, creating excitement \u2014 among young people especially \u2014 about the prospect of joining his administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe average age does tell a particularly interesting story in two ways,\u201d Torres-Springer said. \u201cIt might be because of volatility in the job market but it\u2019s also because I think we are attracting, the administration is attracting, New Yorkers who may not have considered government in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take David Kinchen, a 28-year-old data engineer\u00a0who moved to New York from northern Virginia three years ago. Since getting laid off from a job in fraud detection at Capital One, he\u00a0has applied for more than 1,000 roles and completed\u00a0at least 75 interviews without an offer, he said. Kinchen volunteered for Mamdani\u2019s campaign and applied to the administration, highlighting his tech credentials and a passion for photography.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did data engineering, so I could help with database decisions. There was also a creative option on the application, since I could work as a staff photographer too,\u201d Kinchen said.<\/p>\n
Another applicant, 22-year-old Aurisha Rahman, has struggled to find a job since graduating with a civil-engineering degree from\u00a0Hofstra University on Long Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe job market is even worse than it was last fall,\u201d Rahman said. Mamdani\u2019s resume portal was one of the few places she found open to\u00a0entry-level applicants.<\/p>\n
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Rahman, who was born and raised in Queens, said she wants to give back to the city where she was raised\u00a0and\u00a0wouldn\u2019t be picky about a position. \u201cWhatever they need, I\u2019ll do it. I don\u2019t care,\u201d she said. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s better to be busy with something than nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographer: Adam Gray\/Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — More than 74,000 people, with an average age of 28, have applied for\u00a0roles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[27337,37315,37312,23107,37314,9,24,55,54,37313,56,19125,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-73774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-bloomberg","9":"tag-david-kinchen","10":"tag-job-applications","11":"tag-maria-torres-springer","12":"tag-new-administration","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-city-news","17":"tag-new-york-state-comptroller","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-transition-team","20":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73774","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=73774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}