NEW YORK — About 22,000 city employees face possible furloughs or layoffs as New York City finds a way to make $1 billion in cuts due to COVID-19 revenue loss, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
The mayor began his daily briefing discussing the city’s economic crisis in addition to the health care crisis the city faced in the recent months due to COVID-19 and said the city lost a minimum of $9 billion in revenue, which is an increase from the initial estimate of losing $7.4 billion in revenue.
“We need to find savings,” and the “blunt truth” is that the city “is running out of options,” the mayor said.
“For weeks and weeks we had hoped there would be a federal stimulus, but that hasn’t happened.”
The city is working to find the $1 billion in savings from the labor movement, but the last resort would be the layoffs and furloughs of city workers. The last resort is something the city hopes would not happen since it is “taking away the jobs of city workers who we depend on and their families depend on them for their livelihood,” according to de Blasio.
The mayor clarified that if the layoff plan is in place, that means other efforts to cut $1 billion not succeed.
The plan would take effect in the fall, he added.
As the city continues to see progression in reopening and infection rates, the mayor said the economy is “not going to get better in the short term.”
It will likely take three to four years to “bring everything back to the level it should be,” he added.
