New York will lose the bulk of the 25,000 jobs that were promised by Amazon HQ2
- New York City will lose the bulk of the 25,000 jobs that were initially promised by Amazon's HQ2, the company's spokesperson confirmed.
- Instead, most of those jobs will be spread across 17 of Amazon's corporate offices and tech hubs in North America, including Boston, Vancouver and Denver.
- Amazon announced Thursday it will not build its headquarters in New York City after local opposition. The company had originally planned to build the campus in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.
Most of the 25,000 jobs that were supposed to come to Amazon's HQ2 in New York City will now go elsewhere, now that Amazon has announced it's backing out of its agreement with the city.
Amazon's spokesperson told CNBC on Thursday that the bulk of the 25,000 jobs that the company had promised to create in New York City for HQ2 will now go to other corporate offices and tech hubs owned by Amazon across 17 North American cities, including Boston, San Francisco and Vancouver.
New York will still get a small portion of the new jobs created, as Amazon has a huge presence in the city with roughly 5,000 employees. But it's unclear exactly how much of the new jobs will go to New York City, as the 25,000 jobs were scheduled to be created over a 15-year period, the spokesperson said.
The loss of most of the new jobs is a major setback for New York as Amazon's new headquarters and its additional workforce were expected to further accelerate the city's economic growth, especially in certain sectors like technology and advertising. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo previously said the deal would bring in approximately $27 billion in revenue in exchange for the roughly $3 billion incentive package.
"Amazon's decision to withdraw its New York City HQ2 is a setback for the city that illustrates politics and anti-business sentiment can derail economic development despite competitive strengths," said Nick Samuels, VP at Moody's Investors Service.
Amazon announced on Thursday in a stunning reversal that it would cancel its plan for a second headquarters in New York City, following mounting opposition from local leaders and policymakers. The company announced in November that it would create 25,000 "high-paying" jobs over 15 years in Long Island City, an industrial and residential neighborhood of Queens.
Amazon's spokesperson said that the company will continue to create jobs in Seattle as there are multiple new office buildings under construction. It is also committed to creating 25,000 new jobs in Northern Virginia for its other HQ2 location, and 5,000 new jobs in Nashville. There will not be another HQ2 search process to replace New York City, Amazon said in a blog post.