Menin presses on job creation and retention strategy

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much for the testimony.

I mean, I really want to start with something that I referred to in my opening statement, which is I'm deeply concerned about the job loss in New York City from the past year.

And in this testimony, I didn't hear any

about job creation at all?

What is EDC's plan to focus on job creation and job retention?

So it's not only about creating new jobs, it's also making sure that we're retaining the jobs that currently exist in the city.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

We understand the headwinds that's happening nationally and globally, and New York City is affected as all the other major cities in the United States.

But we do know that New York City is resilient.

And from 9-11 to the financial crisis to coming out of COVID, it has proven to be an incredibly resilient city, primarily because this is New York City and we have the best talent in the world and the greatest infrastructure.

We are comforted by a few statistics that I'll share with you.

We have an economic group that puts out a monthly snapshot.

It came out today, so hopefully you'll be able to see it.

But a couple of things are labor participation is an all-time high.

Our commercial leases have had the highest two consecutive quarters since 2019.

VC investments are the highest since 2021.

Our unemployment rate is fairly low at 5.6%, although BIPOC is higher at 7.3%, so that's something that we are committed to looking at and addressing.

And tourism, transit ridership, all are doing well.

Why is it?

I mean, we have the top talent of, top destination for talent.

We have over a million of college student and recent college graduates, which are an incredible pool.

Year over year, New York City actually has increased jobs by 28,000 and 5,000 since in 2026 year to date.

So this is more than other comparable metros such as Miami, D.C., Boston that actually have had decreased jobs and New York City has increased jobs.

This is on par with like Dallas.

So we're not doing worse than Dallas.

We're doing about similar Dallas, but we're doing a lot better in terms of jobs from our comparable cities.

You know, what is EDC doing?

We believe New York City is an innovation economy.

We have a dedicated business development group that works closely with business generators, the people who are interested in coming, as well as businesses that are thinking of growing here in New York City.

We want to retain.

Like you said, we want to retain companies, so Amex committing to 10,000 jobs in the World Trade Center, Anthropic doubling their size.

These are all great commitments, and it's a proof to New York City is a great place to thrive.