The city has been backsliding in its commitment to move people from the dole to work.
The city has been backsliding in its commitment to move people from the dole to work.
C ongressional budget negotiators have this year looked at using work requirements to cut Medicaid and promote upward mobility. To succeed, federal work requirements need reliable participation among state and local governments. That’s been lacking in New York City. Once a welfare reform stalwart, New York under Mayor Eric Adams has been backsliding in its commitment to move people from the dole to work.
Since Adams took office in January 2022, the number of cash welfare recipients has grown by about 200,000, or 50 percent.
During that same span, welfare enrollment trended down in the rest of the nation. Less reliance on government benefits is what should happen when the economy is expanding. Under the Adams administration, New York gained close to 300,000 jobs, and the local unemployment rate ticked down more than two percentage points.
The federal government temporarily suspended work requirements during Covid. Adams was slow to reinstitute them. Last year, New York’s welfare office placed 15,500 clients in work. Though trending up, that figure represents less than half the total placed annually by Mayor Bill de Blasio toward the end of his tenure in office. Adams’s laxity in restoring normalcy with work requirements has wiped out more than two decades of success in reducing dependency.
That de Blasio, a progressive, outperformed Adams, a centrist, in this area illustrates the importance of governance, not just ideology, in anti-poverty policy.
Weak governance has jeopardized Adams’s chances at reelection. In this year’s mayoral race, Adams will run as an independent, having already acknowledged defeat in the June Democratic primary. The proximate causes of his unpopularity are corruption charges and perceived unseemly deals struck with the Trump administration to escape those charges. But before his corruption controversies hit, Adams was vulnerable due to his botched response to New York’s migrant crisis.
Since spring 2022, over 200,000 migrants have come to New York, many looking to take advantage of the city’s “right to shelter” law. Adams was unable to stem the migrant tide, saddling taxpayers with billions in shelter and related costs.
Together, the surges in welfare and homelessness benefits have reinforced the impression of a city administration adrift. The welfare case is more glaring, though, since a mayor obviously has more control over work requirements than the border.
Next year marks the 30th anniversary of welfare reform. Perhaps New Yorkers have lost sight of what’s at stake in the dependency debate. As congressional negotiators appreciate, there is, for one thing, the budget to mind. New York this fiscal year will spend $1 billion more on public assistance than in 2022.
You’re unlikely to be poor if you work. According to the Census Bureau, of families in New York with a householder with a full-time job, less than 5 percent live below the poverty line.
The New York case highlights the importance of work requirements amid mass immigration. Work assimilates. That immigrants tend to have high work rates bodes well for their long-term integration into mainstream American society. Long-term unemployment sets back social integration. Long-term unemployment is a growing affliction among native adults. According to a 2024 Center for Immigration Studies analysis, the share of working-age native residents of New York State who are neither working nor pursuing work is up five percentage points since 2000. Government exacerbates social dysfunction when benefit programs convert spells of temporary unemployment into chronic cases.
Though now a laggard on welfare and work, New York had a very different reputation under mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. New York, during its comeback years, reduced welfare enrollment by over 800,000 without causing the poverty Armageddon predicted by critics. This achievement was as stunning as the concurrent 85 percent drop in murders.
The welfare issue has been overlooked in this year’s mayor’s race. In fact, one candidate, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, proposes doubling down on dependency by launching a local guaranteed income program. Andrew Cuomo and other leading candidates vying to defeat Mayor Adams should be pressed harder on whether they think New York’s a stronger city with a couple hundred thousand more people on public assistance than when de Blasio left office.
Whoever wins, changing course on welfare will be New York’s problem. The larger lesson, for congressional policymakers, is that past performance is not indicative of future results. What worked in the case of welfare work requirements in the 1990s may or may not replicate when it comes to Medicaid and this era of state and local leadership.