NYC has Only Connected 2,000 Migrants with Jobs — as Thousands More Overwhelm City Shelters

NYC has only connected 2,000 migrants with jobs — as thousands more overwhelm city shelters:

Just over 2,000 migrants in New York City have been connected with a job under the Adams administration’s ongoing push — as the city has had trouble progressing on a plan to end the continuing crisis by putting immigrants to work.

Only about half of the 9,000 migrants contacted by New York’s much-hyped Workforce1 program since last October even responded to the effort to link them with employers, Small Business Services department official Dynishal Gross told the City Council on Tuesday.

And the majority of the roughly 5,500 migrants reached by agents from the department failed to even get a job, as only 2,000 wound up getting work, Gross testified.

The figures provide the first glimpse into City Hall’s slow-going efforts to get jobs for asylum seekers, which the mayor and his team have insisted is the only way to lower the number of migrants in city care.

Those figures, though, barely make a dent in the 65,000 migrants under the city’s care — 27,000 of them who are of working age — spurring a call from council members for action.

“I think the fact that we have about 65,000 asylum seekers under our care and only 5,500 have been connected [to SBS services], I think that shows we need a lot of work,” Small Business Chair Feliz Oswald said.

“We are two years into the crisis. By now we should have good systems.”

But the paltry figures don’t show the full picture, argued city officials.

During a joint oversight hearing on the matter Tuesday, they blamed the disappointing figures on the city’s inability to accurately track the outcomes of its confusing patchwork of migrant services.

“You really can’t plan for much because things sort of evolve. We’ll continue to support our sister agencies as the needs arrive,” said Lorena Lucero, chief policy adviser in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA).

The city has funded 50 nonprofits to also help provide job services to migrants, according to the MOIA, but the patchwork system of migrant resources makes it hard for the city to know how many migrants have the proper training, work authorization and job search help.

It also doesn’t account for the scores of asylum seekers who have turned to illegally earning wages in the underground gig economy that has emerged during the crisis.

“It’s a little loosey-goosey for me,” Upper West Side Dem Councilwoman Gale Brewer said of the lack of data. —>READ MORE HERE

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