More than 170 staffers in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will be notified Wednesday that they will not be working under the administration of incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Most of the 179 employees staffers work within the mayor’s office, in and around City Hall.
One employee — who has worked in city government for two years and less than a year in the mayor’s office — was told Tuesday they would be terminated by the end of the year.
“A lot of us, we didn’t agree with Eric Adams, we just wanted to work in government,” they told THE CITY. “Our values align with what city government should be about.”
“It’s disheartening,” the employee added. “I’m shocked.”
The mayor’s office has around 1,200 employees on payroll overall, according to records from the New York City Comptroller’s office.
Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, called the layoffs, “a massive loss for New Yorkers.”
“These long time civil servants should not be the victims of political gamesmanship,” he said.
A spokesperson for Mamdani’s transition, Dora Pekec, said in a statement that “as is standard practice for a mayoral transition, the Mayor-elect and his transition team are working to build their City Hall plan, which includes new staff in key roles to ensure they can deliver effectively on their agenda.”
Mamdani said Monday that the transition team has received more than 70,000 applications to work in his administration — and vowed to shake things up to make city government run better.
It’s common for new mayors to shake up staff, rarely keeping high-level mayoral appointees, communications staff or deputy mayors from the previous administration. The process of hiring city employees can be long and complicated, though; many require civil-service exams, and it can often take months for even non-civil service jobs to get through. The Adams administration often struggled to fill vital roles, from Health Department staff to lifeguards. Higher-level City Hall staff, though, are usually selected through the mayor.
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