Fewer than 22,000 people took the open competitive exam to become an FDNY firefighter this year despite the department sinking $3 million into a recruitment campaign, pushing back the registration timeline and adding more testing dates, according to figures provided by the department.
The 21,760 people who took the exam this year are less than half of the 46,305 that sat for the 2017 test — the last time an open competitive exam was offered. More than 42,161 took the exam in 2012.
Of test takers this year, 6.5 percent were women, a record high. Just under 38 percent of those who took the exam listed their race as white, 27 percent listed Hispanic, over 21 percent selected Black, just under 4 percent chose Asian and nearly 10 percent selected “other.”…