During an interview with News 12 on Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) stated that “we must make sure we continue to drive down unemployment, particularly in those communities of color.” And black people need to be connected to “jobs that are available, because I need thousands of workers in city government. Many people don’t know how to connect to those jobs. I need nurses. I need school safety agents. I need food service workers. I need lifeguards.” And also said, “we could have solved some of our problems with our migrants and asylum seekers by allowing them to fill those jobs. We have a shortage, and one of those shortages that we have is the issue around lifeguards.”
In response to a question on jobs from a black male resident, Adams said, “We have more jobs in New York City in the history of the city. We’ve recovered our economy. People said it was going to take five years. We recovered our economy within two years. Not only that, when we inherited the city, black unemployment was four times the rate of white unemployment. We cut it in half. For the first time, it’s under 8%, black unemployment. … Now, we must make sure we continue to drive down unemployment, particularly in those communities of color.”
He added, “I need to connect him to the jobs that are available, because I need thousands of workers in city government. Many people don’t know how to connect to those jobs. I need nurses. I need school safety agents. I need food service workers. I need lifeguards. We have so many jobs available. We need to connect gentlemen like him to those jobs.”
Later, [relevant remarks begin around 16:35] Adams stated, “We have a real shortage of lifeguards, and that’s what I was saying, that we could have solved some of our problems with our migrants and asylum seekers by allowing them to fill those jobs. We have a shortage, and one of those shortages that we have is the issue around lifeguards.”
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