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Zohran Mamdani’s disdain for NYC business is showing — painfully

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On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani trumpeted in a tweet that New York City’s storefront vacancies had hit a post-pandemic low.

Turns out he popped the champagne cork too soon.

City Comptroller Mark Levine released a report on Thursday that put the numbers in context — and showed the city lagging the nation.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the local retail vacancy rate stood at 10.5%.

As of April, it was 11% — about 15,700 empty storefronts.

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The national vacancy rate was 4.08% in 2024, below the 2019 rate of 4.37%.

In other words, New York’s storefronts still haven’t recovered since COVID, while the rest of the country bounced back years ago.

Worse, in many city neighborhoods at least 60% of storefronts vacant in early 2026 had already been empty for at least nine months — a sign of sluggish growth.

The city’s labor market is also hurting, having added only about 13,000 private-sector jobs in 2025, down from 95,000 in 2024.

The city’s unemployment rate was 5.6% in April, up by 0.7% in a year — higher than the state’s 4.6% unemployment and the nation’s 4.3%.

Darkened storefronts........

© New York Post