NYC career program costs skyrocket nearly 10 times during COVID: report

An audit released Friday by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander revealed that the cost of a city career placement program skyrocketed from $870 per person to $7,544 between 2020 and 2022 — even though enrollment during that period dwindled significantly.

The audit focused on the Career Pathways program, which is administered by the city’s Human Resources Administration. It found that during the height of the COVID pandemic, the agency didn’t do enough to lower program costs — either through better adjusting its contracts with entities providing career assistance or encouraging more voluntary enrollment.

“Career Pathways has the potential to help connect New Yorkers with vital job opportunities, but when the pandemic arrived, HRA did not ensure that scaled down services resulted in scaled down costs,” Lander said.

From 2020 to 2022, the number of people participating in HRA Career Pathways program plummeted by 86% while overall payments to providers shot up 25% — from $44 million to $55 million, Lander’s audit found.

Part of the reason for that is during the pandemic, the state’s Office of Temporary Disability and Assistance suspended its requirement that people receiving cash assistance take part in employment programs such as Career Pathways. That led HRA to modify its contracts with service providers in April 2020 and to stop referring people to such programs during that time.

But Lander maintains that the program could have shifted from a mandatory footing to a voluntary one — enabling HRA to help more people in their careers, as well as justify its increased per-person cash outlay in that period.

“Not only did HRA allow per person costs to balloon as fewer people participated, but the program did not reopen to new participants for a full fifteen months after the initial pause,” he said, referring to OTDA’s temporary rollback of its mandatory requirement.

“The pandemic left many New Yorkers unemployed and in search of cash and employment assistance — Career Pathways could open real opportunities if done right.”

An HRA spokesperson did not immediately respond to the Daily News.