NYCETC welcomes Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s decision to appoint Julie Su as New York City’s first Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice.
Su has spent her career standing up for workers and making sure economic policy actually reaches the people it’s supposed to serve. Her work ensuring fair pay, protecting workers’ rights, strengthening labor standards, and expanding opportunity reflects a deep, lived commitment to working people. Her leadership at the U.S. Department of Labor demonstrated what it looks like when economic justice is treated as a foundational operating principle.
Economic justice is foundational to New York City’s future, and this role signals a clear intent to put working New Yorkers at the center of City Hall’s agenda.
This role creates an opportunity and immediate responsibility to bring workforce development, worker protections, and economic policy into alignment for New Yorkers who are working, training, and striving to advance.
Affordability is workforce policy. Without coordination across training, economic development, employment systems, and essential supports like childcare and transportation, New Yorkers remain disconnected from the jobs economic justice efforts are meant to grow.
NYCETC believes this moment calls for a coordinated workforce system that invests in quality training, supports workers on and off the clock, and delivers good, high-wage jobs with real career pathways. We stand ready to align the City’s workforce system around the principles Deputy Mayor-designate Su has championed throughout her career: fair treatment, good jobs, and real economic mobility.
As this administration gets to work, NYCETC looks forward to partnering with Deputy Mayor-designate Su to stabilize workforce funding, elevate job quality, and treat workforce providers as core partners in the City’s economic strategy.
We also welcome and congratulate Leila Bozorg on her appointment as Deputy Mayor for Housing. As noted during our recent panel, “Coalitions as Catalysts: Advancing Housing, Aging, and Economic Opportunity Across New York” expanding housing supply must be paired with intentional workforce and economic development strategies so affordability gains translate into real stability—and the ability to remain in the city—for working New Yorkers.