Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at a plumber who makes a lot of money and young people whose financial struggles have motivated a turn to democratic socialism.
It’s hard to escape the topic of money. It surfaces when people across the country talk about gas prices, and when a family in Cuba living on less than $60 for the month needs lunch. A man who works at one of the most famous museums in the world isn’t sure how he’s going to pay off his $100,000 in student loans. At the same time, the joy of the World Cup is stirring debates about corporate greed. In New York City, the focus on money stretches from those who are surprisingly well paid to those uncertain whether they will ever make enough. The City Plumber Who Makes Almost $500,000Jakub Markowski is a plumber supervisor for the city’s public housing agency. He also runs two private plumbing businesses. Last year, my colleague Mihir Zaveri reported, Markowski was paid for almost 2,560 hours of overtime — bringing his annual city earnings to more than $465,000. That was more than what the mayor, the police commissioner, the fire commissioner and the schools chancellor made. Now there are questions about whether Markowski made too much money. The sheer volume of hours and pay that he accrued last year would indicate that he averaged seven hours of overtime every day for 365 days. The Plumbing Foundation City of New York, a nonprofit trade group, filed a complaint with the Buildings Department last year, raising concerns about Markowski’s “questionable work arrangements,” according to a June 2025 email sent to the department. “Enabling one individual to run a private plumbing business while serving as a city plumbing supervisor and accruing more overtime than any other city employee is beyond wasteful, and it raises serious concerns about the integrity, safety and oversight of NYCHA’s building operations,” April McIver, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. Reached by phone on Monday evening, Markowski said he was busy working and hung up. The Young People Who Think the Economy Is RiggedRichard Custodio really wants to get his girlfriend a ring. But rent is so expensive. He’s not sure where he’s going to find the money. “People are feeling this economic precarity,” Custodio, 28, told my colleague Emma Goldberg. “When everything sucks, everything feels really on edge, you’re more open to things changing.” Custodio is one of a growing number of young people turning away from the dominant political parties to embrace democratic socialism, Emma reported. “They believe the capitalist system is rigged for those at the top,” Jay Jacobs, chairman of New York’s Democratic Party, said. The shift helped power two democratic socialists — Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez — to victories in House primaries last month. They had the backing of another democratic socialist who has captured the support of frustrated young people: Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Young supporters of the two candidates cite layoffs in white-collar industries, the threat of job displacement from artificial intelligence, rising costs of living and a sense that money spent on wars could be spent on services. Nationally, the job market for educated young people is dire. The unemployment rate for college graduates between 22 and 27 has been up significantly in the last three years; more than 40 percent of college graduates who are employed held jobs that didn’t require their degrees. And even New Yorkers who have low six-figure salaries say they have realized that neither their college degrees nor their high income seem to guarantee a sense of long-term stability.
WEATHER A sunny day is ahead with temperatures near 80. Look for partly cloudy skies tonight and a low around 69. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until July 23 (Tisha B’Av). QUOTE OF THE DAY “This was crazy heat. This was not your normal heat wave.” — Dalya Ewais, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Health on the prolonged heat wave that may have taken the lives of as many as 29 people in the state. The latest Metro news
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Dear Diary: In the late 1980s, I was an assistant to a best-selling nonfiction writer, Aline Griffith, the Countess of Romanones. To publicize one of her spy memoirs, the countess was booked on “Late Night With David Letterman,” where she demonstrated — to the hilarity of the host and his audience — how to roll a newspaper into a rapier sharp enough to stab a man to death. While arranging her appearance in those pre-internet days, I had several phone conversations with one of David Letterman’s assistants. It emerged that she, like me, was in her mid-20s, new to New York City and living on her own. We had such a good rapport that, after the countess’s appearance, we decided to meet for lunch on a weekend. Now where to meet in vast Manhattan? To our mutual surprise, it turned out we both lived in Kips Bay. Convenient! I was on East 27th Street; incredibly, so was she. Between Second and Third Avenues. My block! I lived at 222 East 27th: a fifth-floor walk-up in a tenement building with four studio apartments on each floor. Her address? 222 East 27th Street. We occupied two of the building’s 20 studio apartments. I can’t fathom the odds of that coincidence any more than I can explain how she and I had managed to climb the same slanted stairwell for more than a year without laying eyes on each other. Lunch was easy: We met on our stoop and walked to Albuquerque Eats, on our corner. After that, we ran into each other often in our building until she got engaged and moved away. We said goodbye the day she left, carrying pillows and luggage down the steps of our stoop as she headed off into her future. I can’t remember her name. — Jennifer Egan Ms. Egan is a writer. Her most recent book is “The Candy House.” Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
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