NEW YORK — A key selling point of Mayor Eric Adams’ longshot reelection bid in New York City is record job growth. But there’s a major caveat to his claims: He had little control over making it happen.
Adams, a Democrat who is running as an independent in the general election, has pointed to the superlative statistic at town halls as evidence of his prudent leadership. He has regularly accused the media of ignoring the historic figure. And the talking point has become a fixture of his reelection stump speeches.
“What did we do for our economy?” Adams asked at his campaign kickoff in late June. “500,000 new jobs in this administration, more jobs than in the city’s history.”
A POLITICO review of data and interviews with experts indicate the jobs landscape is not as fertile as Adams suggests. The record employment figures have been powered by a government-subsidized industry at risk of contraction. The growth rate in the city’s economic output has lagged behind that measure for the nation as a whole since 2020. And hiring has slowed to a near standstill this year, with companies based in the city adding fewer than 1,000 new employees during the first half of 2025.
More fundamentally, the mayor’s role in the city’s economy pales in comparison to the vast and powerful forces that shape national and international commerce. Taken together, that renders one of Adams’ main reelection selling points less potent than if he were to tout a policy or legislation more squarely within his wheelhouse.
Claiming ownership over economic trends during times of bounty is nothing new for New York City mayors, but Adams’ pitch to voters comes just as his own economists warn of gathering fiscal storm clouds: President Donald Trump is scrambling international trade with erratic tariff announcements that risk inflation and a recession. The president is pursuing immigration enforcement so forcefully he could decimate some of the labor required to keep the city’s more than $1 trillion annual economic engine humming. And his policies writ large are contributing to a decline in New York City tourism.
Other fiscal watchdogs have noted much of the city’s post-pandemic job growth has come from a fragile health care sector that experts predict could contract on account of looming Medicaid cuts and changes to state policy.
“It's a very mixed picture overall, and the mayor is overreaching in wanting to take credit for all of that,” said economist James Parrott, senior fellow with the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School, a private university. “If he wants to take credit for the record level of job growth, then he has to also take responsibility for the slowdown in employment growth over the last year and a half.”
The mayor and his team argue otherwise.
“Some experts would like to believe mayors don't have a real impact on creating jobs,” Adams said during a talk Thursday morning at the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank. “They need to look at why we broke the record 10 times, over and over again.”
Adams spokesperson William Fowler said the economic growth in New York City would not have been possible without the mayor’s leadership through the latter stages of the pandemic and the subsequent influx of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.
Under Adams’ stewardship of the NYPD, Fowler added, certain types of violent crime and major felonies on the subway have dropped dramatically, making the city more attractive to employers and workers. (While shootings and murders were at historic lows for the first seven months of the year, felony assaults remain above pre-pandemic levels, NYPD statistics show.)
“When Mayor Adams took office, New York City was still grappling with the social and economic aftermath of the pandemic, violent crime was on the rise, and he was tasked with turning the city’s lights back on,” Fowler said in a statement. “Today, New York City isn’t coming back — it is back.”
Delivering services like policing and garbage pickup is indeed conducive to economic growth. Adams also managed the influx of 230,000 asylum seekers at a cost of $7.5 billion between July 2022 and March 2025, according to a recent economic report from the city’s Office of Management and Budget.
And Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit representing the interests of some of the city’s largest employers, said that while business investment is the main driver of the local economy, Adams’ work to promote the five boroughs in the wake of the pandemic was key to the city’s comeback.
“He did an excellent job encouraging businesses to invest in the city post-pandemic, to bring people back to the office and to really cheerlead for employers that were investing in the city,” she said. “And that counts for a lot.”
But those feats are hardly the same as controlling the tectonic shifts in supply, demand, global trade and industry regulation that govern economic output.
“It’s not that he has zero control. You could see a scenario where a mayor didn’t care about the business community or job creation at all and things could be worse,” said Nicole Gelinas, a fiscal analyst and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “But I do think he is taking too much credit for himself.”
To wit: Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, was famously cool to the city’s corporate class, yet he was able to claim a historic number of jobs each of the eight years he was mayor. That’s because New York City’s main industries like finance, professional services, hospitality and retail are far more tied to national and international trends as opposed to decisions emanating from City Hall.
“You’re supposed to have more jobs than you ever had,” Gelinas said. “That is the definition of a continuously growing national economy — if you didn’t, you’d have a problem.”
Since Adams took office in 2022, the city’s pandemic recovery has been uneven.
Fowler, the mayoral spokesperson, cited statistics from the city’s Economic Development Corp. showing New York City surpassing pre-pandemic job levels in several categories including finance and insurance, professional, scientific, and technical services and management jobs. EDC stats similarly showed the city outpacing both the state and nation in job growth over the past year.
And City Hall pointed to the mayor’s continuation of prior economic stimulus initiatives like tax incentives and development projects, including the Willets Point development in Queens, as boons for employment — a sentiment echoed by the mayor’s campaign.
“Without leadership at City Hall, New York’s recovery could have stalled,” campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro said in a statement. “Instead, we’re breaking records. That’s not luck — that’s leadership.”
But other observers have a less rosy view of the city’s financial situation.
A data dashboard from the Citizens Budget Commission indicates that the rate of growth in the gross city product has lagged the nation’s gross domestic product since 2020. And a July report from the city Comptroller’s Office found the city has only surpassed its pre-pandemic job levels because of a dramatic rise in health care and social service employment — a trend being driven by the proliferation of home health aides.
“Without the sizable job gains in this sector, citywide employment would be on a slight downward trajectory and would still be short of pre-pandemic levels,” the report read. “This is of particular concern given huge cuts to Medicaid in the Federal Reconciliation Bill.”
And while the city did indeed outpace state and national job growth over the last year, a report in The New York Times found that New York City companies essentially stopped hiring workers during the first half of 2025 — a grim portent for future economic turmoil.
Adams is far from the first mayor to attempt wrangling the economy from City Hall. And he will not be the last.
On Thursday, Andrew Cuomo, an independent mayoral candidate looking to take Adams’ job after losing the June Democratic primary, was already pitching a fiscal remedy of his own: A $1.5 billion municipal capital fund designed to spur job growth, the conversion of city-owned property into tech hubs and a $100 million investment in open spaces.
“With this slowdown, we need an affirmative plan to combat the economic forces at work,” the former New York governor said. “If we do nothing, you're going to see those numbers continue to decrease.”
Jeff Coltin contributed reporting.
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