For generations, the hardworking New Yorkers who have built our city were drawn here, or stayed here, because of access to opportunity and jobs.
For all the conversations about how affordability is affecting New Yorkers, one key group must be further emphasized: the job creators who hold our local communities together. These are the neighborhood restaurants, family-owned bodegas, innovative startups and local manufacturers who create and sustain the jobs that families need to thrive. Mayor Mamdani has, encouragingly, emphasized the need to improve how the city supports these vital pillars of our community — particularly the small businesses who face very different challenges than the corporate business community.
Much like all New Yorkers, these businesses are deeply struggling. Supply challenges, rising costs, bureaucratic red tape, and government inefficiencies all threaten their livelihoods. As a result, approximately 5,310 businesses closed in NYC in the first quarter of 2025, and only 4,910 businesses opened in that same period — the lowest since at least 2018. We hear from folks like these in our communities every day saying the same thing: they need government to make it easier to maintain and grow their business — and their workforce.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean a handout. It means common sense improvements to help them navigate these challenges in a system that works for them rather than against them. 30% of jobs created in New York City were at businesses with five or fewer employees — when these local businesses are thriving and hiring, it’s entire neighborhoods that thrive alongside them.
That’s why our Five Borough Jobs Campaign — the only group in New York City representing businesses of all sizes in every borough — is proposing a comprehensive, proactive agenda to address the front line challenges our members face with resources and clarity.
Take, for example, a key issue Mamdani has highlighted: cutting red tape. We hear from small businesses who purposefully “leave the mop out” during routine inspections, taking a quick fine for something obvious rather than spending valuable time and resources being interrogated on 6,000 regulations, a large number of which are unnecessary.
Our agenda echoes the mayor’s call to halve fines and fees and even goes a step further: a 90-day moratorium, with exceptions for health and safety, to ensure meeting that ambitious goal can be a reality. Combined with streamlined permitting reform, the mayor can make clear that it shouldn’t be so difficult to both start a business and keep it open.
While we remove unnecessary hurdles that businesses face, we also need more effective resources. The Department of Small Business Services has an 18% vacancy rate, resulting in fewer than half of the agency’s critical indicators being on track for success. Ensuring the department is fully funded and staffed also means supporting the Business Improvement Districts, merchant associations, and other community-based organizations that help businesses thrive.
We must be careful not to undermine progress with policies that raise costs for the very businesses we’re trying to help. Oftentimes, seemingly progressive legislation inadvertently impacts mom and pops in a disproportionately negative way. For example, how Fair Workweek laws have heaped significant wage costs on small businesses without consideration of scheduling circumstances.
Tackling the affordability crisis will not be achieved by going backwards under the guise of going forwards — the last thing our city needs is weakening critical incentives, or new regulations on last-mile facilities that increase supply costs for small businesses.
And finally, every New Yorker deserves a safe and thriving community. That includes everything from fighting for sustainable child care solutions so folks can work and raise a family to investing in stronger workforce training pipelines in underserved neighborhoods. It also means appointing a small business director to the mayor’s new Department of Community Safety to ensure that both businesses and public spaces are safe for all.
All of the policies and themes in our agenda come down to this one important idea: addressing affordability is inseparable from supporting good-paying jobs — not just at a big company or two, but at businesses in every corner of the city.
Grech is president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. Peers is president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. They are the co-chairs of the Five Borough Jobs Campaign.
