New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recognized that the city’s private-sector job numbers are “troubling,” as concerns about a business exodus grow due to proposals to raise taxes further in the city.
In early April, New York state’s Department of Labor reported that the Big Apple lost 19,500 jobs from January 2025 to January 2026, marking the only negative net change in the state and a stark contrast from the 114,300 private-sector jobs added to the city in 2024. As corporate concerns mount in the global financial hub over the mayor’s high tax plans, Mamdani spoke out about the job numbers on Wednesday.
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“I think we are facing some troubling numbers,” Mamdani told the New York Times.
The mayor’s acknowledgment comes as he has sparred with Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) over his plans to hike New York City’s taxes. Mamdani sought Albany’s support for a 2% tax hike on residents earning over $1 million a year and on New York’s most profitable corporations to close the city’s $5.4 million budget gap. Hochul rejected Mamdani’s proposed tax on high-income earners, frustrating the city council’s progressive caucus, which then urged Hochul to back a different high-income tax.
Mamdani’s proposal for higher taxes on New York City’s wealthiest residents and corporations has drawn the most vocal blowback from businesses and financial firms that worry about the tax implications for their ability to make more money while based in the Big Apple.
Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms based in New York, is reportedly mulling opening a new headquarters in either Florida, Austin, or Nashville, according to the Financial Times. It would be the biggest name to decentralize out of New York City since the Mamdani era began.
Whichever city in the South ends up housing the private equity giant would see a major boon from it, while the move would bode poorly for New York’s reputation as the longtime global financial hub.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, issued a foreboding message to his company’s shareholders this week, warning New York City leadership that “higher taxes mean lower returns on capital and less competitiveness by their nature.”
“Individuals vote with their feet — you can already see a fairly large exodus of people and jobs out of some states with high taxes and high expenses (often due to high taxes and regulatory burdens),” Dimon wrote.
He pointed to a 1970s exodus of Fortune 500 companies from New York City, arguing that the “price of doing business in New York City,” including the cost of “taxes, office rents, labor,” was largely what pushed companies to leave during that time.
“No city — or company or country — has a divine right to success,” Dimon wrote.
Looking deeper into the city’s job losses in 2025, however, the state’s Department of Labor reported job gains in the financial industry, up 4,200 jobs in the past year. The department reported that the most job losses in the city came from leisure and hospitality; private education and health services; natural resources, mining, and construction; manufacturing; trade, transportation, and utilities.
But Mamdani was much more optimistic about the city’s future in his interview with the New York Times, noting his hope for the future despite the 2025 job losses.
“I am incredibly heartened by what we’ve also seen at the same time,” Mamdani said. “We’re seeing the highest demand for Manhattan office space in over a decade.”
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Mamdani also told the outlet that he is working to ensure his office does not have to raise local property taxes by 9.5%, as he threatened to in February if Hochul did not follow through with taxes on the wealthy.
“We are continuing to work every day to ensure that it’s off the table,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani has called the 9.5% property tax increase proposal “a last resort” to turn to if Albany does not work to increase taxes on the wealthy.
