A new Comptroller’s report finds near-zero net job creation outside healthcare in 2025 and raises alarms about AI displacement hitting high-paying white-collar sectors hardest
What the Numbers Say About Work in New York City Right Now
A new report published February 26, 2026, by NYC Comptroller Mark Levine’s office asks a direct question: What is going on with NYC jobs? The answer is sobering. Outside of the Healthcare and Social Assistance sector, New York City added no net jobs in 2025. The broader U.S. economy averaged just 31,000 private sector jobs added per month — well below the levels needed to absorb a growing workforce. And within these already weak numbers, a troubling pattern has emerged: young college graduates are now facing higher unemployment rates than older workers without college degrees — a reversal of a decades-long relationship between education and employment security.
A Low-Hire, Low-Fire Economy
The Comptroller’s report describes the current labor market as a “low-hire, low-fire” economy. Businesses are not conducting mass layoffs — initial jobless claims remain relatively subdued — but they are also not hiring at the pace that a healthy economy would suggest. The sectors that have driven New York City’s economic identity for generations — Finance, Information, and Professional and Business Services — are either stagnant or showing modest losses. Healthcare, by contrast, continues to add jobs, but these tend to be lower-wage positions that serve local communities rather than the economy-driving roles that generate the multiplier effects associated with financial and technology sector employment. The full Comptroller’s report is publicly available and includes detailed charts, methodology, and data sourcing for readers who want to examine the underlying numbers.
The Young Graduate Problem
Perhaps the most striking finding in the report concerns the employment outcomes of recent college graduates. Historically, having a college degree provided a significant employment advantage over not having one, even for younger workers who face inherently higher unemployment rates than their more experienced counterparts. That advantage has steadily eroded since the early 2010s, and in New York City the inversion — where young college graduates face higher unemployment than older workers without degrees — emerged around late 2024. The Comptroller’s report notes two candidate explanations. First, the rise of artificial intelligence capable of automating entry-level white-collar tasks — the exact work that recent graduates historically performed to build their careers. Second, the economic uncertainty created by unpredictable federal policy-making, which makes employers reluctant to take hiring risks on workers with no track record. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s College Labor Market tracker monitors these trends with regular data updates and is cited directly in the Comptroller’s analysis.
AI’s Footprint in New York’s Workforce
The report devotes significant attention to data from Anthropic’s generative AI platform, Claude, which the Comptroller’s office used in an August 2025 report and revisits now with new state-level data. New York leads all U.S. states — trailing only Washington, D.C. — in per-capita usage of AI tools relative to population. That usage is heavily concentrated in Computer and Mathematical occupations, which account for 43 percent of New Yorkers’ work-related AI conversations despite representing only about 3 percent of the workforce. Arts, Design, Entertainment, and Education occupations also show significant usage. The data suggest that AI is not yet transforming food service, construction, or transportation in New York — but those sectors are expected to follow as adoption broadens. The Comptroller concludes that the near-term adjustment appears uneven, with particular challenges for young college graduates entering professional occupations. Anthropic’s Economic Index, which provides state-level breakdowns of AI usage by occupation, is publicly accessible and represents an unprecedented window into how generative AI is actually being deployed in the American workforce.
What This Means for the Mamdani Administration
The jobs picture has direct implications for Mayor Mamdani’s economic agenda. His platform included commitments to economic equity, worker protection, and job creation — goals that are harder to achieve when the broader labor market is stagnant and when the sectors most susceptible to AI displacement also happen to be the sectors that generate the tax revenue the city depends on. The Comptroller’s report does not prescribe policy solutions, but it raises questions that the administration will need to answer: How does a progressive mayor protect workers from technological displacement? How does the city maintain fiscal stability if high-wage employment continues to stall? And how does it invest in the young workers who are being left behind by a hiring market that has grown risk-averse and automation-reliant? These are not rhetorical questions. They are the governing challenges of the next several years.
