On Monday, September 28, the city of New York inaugurated at 2 Lafayette Street, in the Civic Center of Manhattan, a center where those who want to work in the public administration can be helped to find a position, prepare the candidacy and understand how the exams of the civil service work. The Jobs NYC Center will begin to receive the public regularly on Monday 5 October: you can enter without appointment from Monday to Thursday, from 10 to 16.
The most useful thing about the new center is that it gathers in the same place some parts of an intake system that for those who do not know it can be complicated. Employees will be able to show what agencies they are taking, help look for available positions and fill out applications, explain what jobs require an exam and how to enroll. The center will also organize hiring hall, i.e. days when agencies that have places to cover meet directly candidates, as well as fair jobs, courses and meetings such as those dedicated to the operation of civil service. (New York City)
The most practical detail concerns examinations. In the same building, on the 17th floor, there is already one of the Computer-based Testing and Application Centers of DCAS, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. For some positions it will then be possible to ask for information on the ground floor and then use in the same building the center that manages exams and practices of the civil service. The testing centers have different schedules from the new Jobs NYC Center: they are open from Monday to Friday from 9 to 17.
Exams are a significant part of municipal assumptions because, according to DCAS, more than 80 percent of the work in the city public administration requires overcoming a civil service exam. The mechanism is not a normal job interview. The application is submitted during the period for a given profile, the examination is supported and the passer is inserted in a ranking. When an agency needs to hire for that profile, it can call candidates on the list for an interview or hiring pool. Being in the ranking does not guarantee the recruitment: it depends on the available places and the location reached in the list.
Not all works for the city require an examination. Locations are posted on the City of New York Jobs official portal, and in ads it is specified whether the civil service exam is mandatory, may be requested or not served. For example, among the positions published in recent weeks there is a Cyber Security Analyst for DCAS, for which no examination is required, and a Scientist specializing in Water Ecology for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, connected instead to a specific civil service exam. Ads change continuously and requirements and deadlines must be checked for each location.
For those who still have to take an exam, DCAS also publishes a calendar of open selections. At the end of September, for example, applications for profiles such as Correction Officer, Police Communications Technician and Special Officer are still open. Since July 1st, 2026, the city has also extended the exemption from the payment of the registration fee to the students of high school in New York and to those presenting for the first time a question for a civil service exam.
The new door arrives while the municipal car continues to have thousands of unused places. The numbers change depending on the time and the way they are counted: amNewYork wrote Monday that the city agencies currently have over 14 thousand authorized but vacant positions. The last detailed data published in the spring by the Comptroller’s office indicated 13.872 in the May plan, on 305,589 places authorized full-time, with a vacancy rate of 4.5 percent. The fact does not mean that all those positions can be assumed immediately: the same Comptroller points out that not all authorized places are necessarily financed.
The Jobs NYC Center is not a completely new program. Jobs NYC had been launched in March 2024 by the administration of Eric Adams and provided hiring itinerant halls in the five boroughs, along with a portal to connect people looking for work, companies and public agencies. In the first six months, 26 events were organized, attended by about 8,500 people; in the course of 2024 the total number of people gathered from the hiring hall reached about 10 thousand. The programme was then expanded in the following years. The difference is that it now has a permanent headquarters for the first time, especially for public sector opportunities.
The choice of the place also has a practical reason. The local on the ground floor of 2 Lafayette Street belongs to the city and was unused for a long time, except for some temporary initiatives related to art. DCAS, which in addition to the civil service system also manages a substantial part of municipal buildings, has transformed it into the new center maintaining the possibility of hosting cultural activities.
L’articolo A Manhattan has opened a door to find work in public administration proviene da IlNewyorkese.
