Georgia Hall
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Bloomberg<\/p>\n
More than 74,000 people, with an average age of 28, have applied for roles in Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new administration. Those figures are both a measure of enthusiasm for New York City\u2019s incoming mayor and a sign of how tough the job market is for young people in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
Young voters and volunteers fueled the 34-year-old Mamdani\u2019s fast rise from a relatively unknown Queens assemblyman to mayor-elect of America\u2019s largest city. A lot of them had time on their hands: New Yorkers aged 16 to 24 faced a 13.2% unemployment rate in 2024, 3.6 percentage points higher than in 2019, according to a May report from the New York state comptroller.<\/p>\n
New York City had a 5.8% unemployment rate overall in August, 1.3 percentage points above the US average. The city added roughly 25,000 jobs this year through September, compared with about 106,000 during the same period in 2024, according to city data.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s campaign pledge to lower the cost of living in New York resonated with voters struggling to find jobs and establish themselves at a time when rents have stayed high and income growth has slowed. Now he\u2019s looking to hire an unspecified number of roles across 60 agencies, 95 mayoral offices and more than 250 boards and commissions, with senior roles a priority, according to his transition team.<\/p>\n
The typical size of the New York City mayoral staff – commissioners, communications, operations and community affairs – is about 1,100, according Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit finance watchdog. City 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 20,000 of the applicants came from out of state.<\/p>\n
When Barack Obama was elected US president 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 he needed applicants with specific tech and economics skills, 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 transition efforts, creating excitement – among young people especially – 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 who moved to New York from northern Virginia three years ago. Since getting laid off from a job in fraud detection at Capital One, he has applied for more than 1,000 roles and completed at 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 Hofstra 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 entry-level applicants.<\/p>\n
Rahman, who was born and raised in Queens, said she wants to give back to the city where she was raised and wouldn\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Georgia Hall \u00a0|\u00a0 Bloomberg More than 74,000 people, with an average age of 28, have applied for roles…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":453871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,7830,29171,11744,9642,10898,2563,17903,79,458,90,1074,27062,454,8042,46696,4289,425,728,5708,942,635,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,12357,450,950,615,80,59846,1085,93998,208155,3161,646,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,636,5709,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-453870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-autopilot","10":"tag-barack","11":"tag-barack-obama","12":"tag-campaigns","13":"tag-campaigns-u0026-elections","14":"tag-career","15":"tag-career-resources-u0026-planning","16":"tag-economy","17":"tag-economy-news","18":"tag-elections","19":"tag-exclude","20":"tag-exclude-social-autopilot","21":"tag-government","22":"tag-job","23":"tag-job-listings","24":"tag-listings","25":"tag-local","26":"tag-local-news","27":"tag-mamdani","28":"tag-neutral","29":"tag-new","30":"tag-new-york","31":"tag-new-york-city","32":"tag-news","33":"tag-newyork","34":"tag-newyorkcity","35":"tag-ny","36":"tag-nyc","37":"tag-obama","38":"tag-overall","39":"tag-overall-neutral","40":"tag-planning","41":"tag-politics","42":"tag-portfolios","43":"tag-resources","44":"tag-resumes","45":"tag-resumes-u0026-portfolios","46":"tag-social","47":"tag-u0026","48":"tag-united-states","49":"tag-united-states-of-america","50":"tag-unitedstates","51":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","52":"tag-us","53":"tag-usa","54":"tag-york","55":"tag-zohran","56":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}