A new report by City Comptroller Mark Levine released Wednesday calls out a New York City program designed to help people with disabilities find jobs for its lack of transparency behind its success numbers.
The report, which covers fiscal years 2024 and 2025 and was shared exclusively with Able News, found that while the NYC: ATWORK program “has successfully serviced hundreds of New Yorkers, its impact has been limited by fragmented resources and insufficient data tracking,” the report read.
ATWORK, which falls under the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) and connects New Yorkers with disabilities to jobs and internships with established private and public businesses, only helped 1,268 people with disabilities and connected 99 of those individuals to employment. The program hosted more than five dozen workshops, seven job fairs and conducted more than 200 mock interviews, according to the 32-page report.
NYC Comptroller Mark Levine.
Photo credit: A. Siam for the Office of the NYC Comp.
However, within the pitfalls of Levine’s findings, the report showed that a lack of resources and weak accountability has limited the impact of the dedicated employment program.
The nearly 1,300 people supported through ATWORK represented just 4% of the 35,000 New Yorkers with disabilities seeking employment, the report found.
“Every New Yorker deserves the opportunity to find meaningful work, and that includes ensuring people with disabilities have the support they need to succeed in the workforce, said City Comptroller Mark Levine in a press release shared with Able News. “Job placement programs like ATWORK help connect New Yorkers with consolidated resources while strengthening families, communities and our local economy. As we undertake the hard-but necessary work of making government more efficient, strengthening proven programs like ATWORK must be part of the conversation.”
But building a stronger program is showing to be a goal too big as MOPD has been allocated a flat budget of $678,657 for both fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
While MOPD and NYC:ATWORK “understands that meaningful work is the foundation for economic mobility and personal dignity,” read an emailed statement Thursday from an MOPD spokesperson that also “acknowledges that there is still significant unmet need among NYers with disabilities. The City is committed to improving employment outcomes for this population.”
Advocates like Michael Schweinsburg, President of the 504 Democratic Club has repeatedly asked for the budget to be bumped up to $10 million a year, five dollars for each disabled New Yorker as opposed to the current insufficient amount of 0.88 cents, to address the needs of people with disabilities in the city.
The report also included an analysis showing that people hired through ATWORK compared to the composition of individuals with disabilities citywide found that the proportion of hires by ethnicity did not fully align with the overall population.
For example, the percentage of ATWORK hires who were Hispanic was lower than the percentage of disabled New Yorkers who are Hispanic, accounting for 33% of people with disabilities citywide but only 19% of ATWORK hires.
A similar dynamic was identified when examining ATWORK hires by gender. Women make up the majority of people both in terms of overall population and those that self-identify as disabled, but they were in the minority of those hired through ATWORK during the five-year period (2019-2023) examined by the comptroller’s staff.
This brief data does not reflect the full number of people enrolled in the program and connected to jobs; a lack of funding and staffing, “hindered” MOPD’s opportunity to “have an effective tracking system to effectively observe its program performance,” the report said.
In an exclusive interview with then incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani which delved into his plans to fix intersectional discrimination when hiring people with disabilities, he told Able News: “I think this is something that I’ve heard from many New Yorkers, is too often, the only kinds of jobs that they think they have the ability to get are the ones that have their identity in the title of the job that has some signifier of who they are in the title of that position,” Mayor Mamdani said before taking office. “And disabled New Yorkers are like any New Yorker across the city where they have a place in leading our city and in being considered for roles that extend beyond those that are considered of innate importance only to disabled New Yorkers.”
The current review was launched in response to concerns from disability advocates that the city’s efforts to support job seekers with disabilities are inadequate, with a focus on the ATWORK program. According to the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year data published by the U.S. Census Bureau, the unemployment rate of people with disabilities in NYC was 15%.
Issues that may be holding back the agency from providing more employment aid are the systemic barriers people with disabilities face when searching for, acquiring, and maintaining full employment, according to an email from the MOPD spokesperson. That statement said that these “barriers include discrimination in the hiring process and complicated benefit systems leading many to fear that they could lose their benefits if they began to work. These barriers ultimately limit earning potential and financial independence. MOPD is committed to addressing these barriers.”
Levine’s report issued Wednesday recommended expanding resources, improving tracking of performance and removing employment barriers so the program “can connect more New Yorkers with disabilities to jobs,” the report said. The comptroller wrote that “MOPD generally agreed with the review’s seven recommendations, stating that it has already begun implementing some of them.”
“We do a lot of great programs right now like New York City ATWORK and I want to expand that if possible,” Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities Commissioner Nisha Agarwal told Able News just one month into the job. She was appointed to the post in February.
Her MOPD team currently consists of six staff members, according to the report.
The report noted that the current MOPD leadership agreed with the comptroller’s recommendations outlined in the report. The recommendations call for working with the City Council to obtain additional funding, increasing outreach to Spanish-speaking job seekers, surveying participants, working with other city agencies to reduce barriers to employment, and tracking ATWORK’s progress.
This article, originally published on July 29, 2026, has been updated to include comments from MOPD.