NBC's decision to cancel Law & Order doesn't just mean that we'll no longer get to guess which headlines were ripped (Hookergate! The Taconic Wrong Way Crash! Hipster Grifter!) on the latest episode, it also means that $79 million will not go towards NYC businesses, actors, and interests. That's the amount that NYC Film, Theater and Broadcasting Commissioner Katharine Oliver estimates the productions spends annually—and she also told the NY Times that the show employs about 4,000 people, each year, including one-day parts. Oliver said Law & Order producer-mastermind Dick Wolf "really proved that New York City is an affordable place to shoot." more ›

The NYC economy added 130,000 jobs during the Bloomberg administration— but most of them are in low-paid, un-fun professions like "retail, food service, and home health care." Good luck paying off your student loans on $20K per year! more ›

In its fall preview, New York magazine has assembled five different people—professors, economists, etc.—to give their thoughts on the future of NYC's economy—and it's helpfully arranged like a weather forecast, from "Those Clouds Still Look Ominous" to "Do I See Some Sun?" Here's a little from "The Storm’s Not Over Yet" prognosis (aka, glass is more half empty) from Independent Budget Office director Ronnie Lowenstein, "We’re expecting the city to lose a total of 250,000 jobs, and we’ve lost about half of that at this point. We are anticipating that we will continue to shed jobs through the second quarter of 2010... The financial sector is continuing to lose jobs, and because that remains the main driver for the local economy, that means nearly all of the other sectors of the local economy are shedding jobs as well. Credit remains very tight, and there’s a huge glut of unsold apartments, and that’s causing construction employment to plummet." Okay, let's just think about how the weather is nicer. more ›

City Comptroller Bill Thompson is releasing some economic data and it's grim. Here are some stats from his press release: "New York City unemployment rate is likely to reach 9.5% by early 2010," "More than one in seven New Yorkers were unemployed or underemployed in the first quarter of 2009," and "Overall unemployment rose by 72% between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009, but unemployment in the African-American community swelled by 167%. The unemployment rate among African-Americans during the first quarter of this year rose to 14.7% - four times faster than with other ethnic groups." The NY Times dives into African-American unemployment figures; one man who lost his customer service job said, "My department was mostly black and Hispanic. Management was mostly white and they didn’t get let go. You would think they would trim the fat from the top, not the bottom, because it’s the lower-wage workers that do the bulk of the work." more ›