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Midtown Manhattan looking north from the Empire State Building
According to collegetoppicks, New York is a major center for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts in the United States and beyond. Together with London and Tokyo, the city is considered one of the financial centers of the world economy. The metropolitan area has the largest regional economy in the United States and is the second largest urban economy in the world after Tokyo. Many large companies are headquartered in New York, including 44 Fortune 500 companies. New York is also unique among US cities in the sheer number of foreign companies: one in ten private sector jobs in the city comes from foreign companies.
New York is home to some of the most expensive buildings in the country and the world. 450 Park Avenue was sold on July 2, 2007 for $510 million, or about $17,100 per square foot. This broke the barely a month old record for an American commercial building at 660 Madison Avenue that yielded $15,890 per square meter in June 2007.
Midtown Manhattan is the largest central business district in the United States and contains the largest concentration of skyscrapers in the city. Lower Manhattan is the third largest central business district in the United States. In this area are the New York Stock Exchange – on Wall Street – and the NASDAQ, the world’s largest stock exchanges measured by average daily trading volume and market capital. Financial services account for 35% of the city’s employment. Real estate investment is an important part of the city’s economy, as in 2006 the value of all New York assets was $802.4 billion. The Time Warner Center is the highest-value building in New York, valued at $1.1 billion.
The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street.
The television and film industry is the second largest in the country after Hollywood. Creative sectors such as the new media, advertising, fashion, design and architecture are an increasing share of employment. High-tech industries such as life science, software development, game design and Internet services are also growing. These sectors benefit from the city’s location at the end of several transatlantic fiber links. Other important sectors are medical technology and research, non-profit institutions and universities.
Production is an important but decreasing share of employment. Clothing, chemicals, furniture and metal and food products are some of the main products.The food processing industry is the city’s most stable manufacturing sector. It is a $5 billion industry and employs more than 19,000 residents, many of whom are immigrants who barely speak English.
Media
The NBC Studios are located in Rockefeller Center
New York is home to some of the largest (newspaper) publishers, most successful television stations and largest record companies in the world. Among the established media conglomerates are Time Warner, News Corporation, the Hearst Corporation and Viacom. Seven of the eight largest advertising agencies worldwide are headquartered in New York.Three of the Big Four record labels (Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI) are based in the city. Publishers, such as Random House,Simon & Schuster and Penguin Group jointly employ approximately 25,000 people.
More than 200 newspapers and 350 magazines have offices in the city, including the two major newspapers The Wall Street Journal (circulation: 2.1 million) and The New York Times (circulation: 1.1 million). Major tabloids in the city include the New York Daily News (circulation: 795,000) and the New York Post (circulation: 650,000), founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. The city also has a large ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines in over 40 languages. El Diario La Prensa is New York’s largest Spanish-language newspaper with a circulation of 265,000 per day. The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African-American newspaper. In addition, there are a number of borough-only newspapers, such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Staten Island Advance.
The television and film industry is a major employer in the city, employing 100,000 people. The four major US broadcasters ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC are all headquartered in New York. Many cable channels are also based in the city, such as MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. In 2005, more than 100 television shows were shot in New York.
The Statue of Liberty is a major tourist attraction
Tourism
Tourism is important to New York, with approximately 46 million foreign and domestic tourists in 2007. The most famous landmark is probably the Statue of Liberty, a major tourist attraction and one of the United States’ best-known icons. In addition, landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Ellis Island, Broadway theater productions, museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other tourist attractions such as Central Park, Washington Square Park, Brooklyn Bridge, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, United Nations Headquarters, Bronx Park containing the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden, shopping on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival and free performances in Central Park during Summerstage as tourist attractions. After the September 11 attacks, 2001, the remains of the World Trade Center, also known as Ground Zero, frequented by many people.
According to the tourism board, in 2012 the most tourists came from: Canada (1,063,000), the United Kingdom (1,033,000), Brazil (806,000), France (667,000), Germany (547,000), Australia (595,000), China (541,000 ), Middle East (478,000), Italy (449,000) and Mexico (387,000).
