New York City registered $45.7 billion in contracts and purchase orders in fiscal 2025. Firms owned by Black women won 0.24% of the value of those that carried minority and women-owned business goals. That is about a quarter of a cent on the dollar.
The figure comes from the city comptroller’s annual report on minority and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs), released Jan. 30. Black-owned firms of both genders won 1.65% of the value of goal-covered contracts: 1.41% for Black men’s firms, 0.24% for Black women’s. Those contracts totaled $17.5 billion.
City Council member Lincoln Restler, who chairs the Committee on Contracts, put it in terms of count after a September hearing, as the New York Amsterdam News reported Thursday. “Out of every 100 contracts that goes to an M/WBE firm, just one of them is owned by a Black woman,” he said. He said the city is “not reaching the communities that need it more broadly,” noting that Black and Brown New Yorkers are roughly half the city.
The comptroller’s report found that the share of goal-covered contract value going to M/WBEs fell from 16.9% in fiscal 2024 to 8.43% in fiscal 2025, or $1.48 billion of $17.5 billion. Across all city contracting, M/WBEs received $2.4 billion of roughly $46 billion, about 5%. That share has hardly moved: 4.93% in fiscal 2023, 6.09% in fiscal 2024, 5.34% in fiscal 2025.
The report calls the pattern a “disparity within the disparity.” Some categories of M/WBE win far smaller contracts than others, and Black women’s firms sit at the bottom of the city’s own table. The comptroller also found that 65% of M/WBE contracts were registered after their start date. The average contract for a non-certified firm was $3.6 million. For an M/WBE-certified firm it was $754,000.
Restler sponsored a bill that would require nonprofit vendors to report how much of their city money they pass on to M/WBE subcontractors. The city hands billions to nonprofits for services such as private security and food, and today it cannot say how much of that reaches Black and Brown-owned companies. A rule that makes the pass-through visible is a modest step, but it is the right one: money that cannot be counted cannot be steered.
There were 11,382 certified M/WBEs at the end of fiscal 2025. Only 2,478 of them won a new contract or purchase order. More than 8,900 certified firms, including the Black women the city’s own numbers say it reaches least, won nothing new.
The comptroller’s recommendations include cutting requirements that keep small firms out, collecting better subcontractor data and shortening contracting timelines. The city has the data and the recommendations. What it lacks is a result.
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