Want to live and work in New York City?

New York ranks among the five most expensive cities in the United States, alongside San Francisco and Honolulu. Rent is the dominant item. A studio in Manhattan below 96th Street rarely goes for less than $3,000 a month. In sought-after Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg or Park Slope, prices are similar. Costs drop in Queens, the Bronx, and more distant areas.

Public transit is, ironically, one of the cheap parts. The MTA monthly subway and bus pass costs less than a single day of parking in Manhattan. Food varies: sit-down restaurants are expensive, but markets in Sunset Park, Flushing, and Jackson Heights sell ingredients at prices comparable to mid-sized cities.

Taxes are high. New York residents pay federal tax, New York State tax, and also a municipal income tax that most other American cities do not charge. In return, median salaries are high. For immigrants in sectors like technology, finance, healthcare, and law, the math tends to work; in service jobs, sharing an apartment is the rule.

New York is the global financial capital and the largest legal cluster in the United States. Investment banks such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup have headquarters or major operations in the city. The technology sector has grown enormously in the last decade, with Google, Meta, Amazon, and Bloomberg occupying large buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Media and advertising concentrate in Midtown, with Conde Nast, NBCUniversal, The New York Times, and WPP. The hospital complex is enormous: NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, and Memorial Sloan Kettering employ tens of thousands. Fashion employs everyone from designers to tailors in the Garment District. Restaurants and hospitality absorb immigrant labor on a large scale.

For professionals on a specialized visa, New York is one of the best markets in the country. For those who arrive without a network, the entry point is usually construction, restaurants, cleaning, elder care, delivery, and nanny work. Brazilians have a strong presence in construction and services, and at higher levels in finance, design, and medicine.

New York has some of the most respected hospitals in the world. NewYork-Presbyterian (affiliated with Columbia and Cornell), Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, Memorial Sloan Kettering (oncology), Hospital for Special Surgery (orthopedics), and Weill Cornell appear on every international ranking. Top-tier care in transplants, cardiology, and cancer is available at scale.

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest public network in the United States, with hospitals like Bellevue, Elmhurst, Jacobi, and Lincoln. It serves anyone, with or without insurance and regardless of immigration status. The NYC Care program provides primary care to uninsured residents on a sliding-scale fee.

The system is expensive without coverage. A private ER visit can run into thousands of dollars. For those on a work visa, employment usually provides coverage. Self-employed families use New York State of Health to choose plans on the ACA marketplace. Brazilians often look for community clinics in Astoria, Newark, and Harrison that accept appointments in Portuguese.

New York is the rare American city where not owning a car is normal. The MTA subway runs 24 hours, has 472 stations, and connects the five boroughs (Staten Island has ferries and buses more than the subway). City buses fill in the gaps, and express service connects suburbs to downtown. Walking is essential in Manhattan and dense parts of Brooklyn.

For regional distances, there is the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) and Metro-North, which serve Long Island, Westchester, and Connecticut. PATH connects Manhattan to Jersey City, Hoboken, and Newark. Citi Bike, the bike-share system, covers Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and keeps expanding.

Airports: John F. Kennedy (JFK) in Queens is the main international hub; LaGuardia (LGA) is domestic and regional; Newark Liberty (EWR), in New Jersey, serves both international and domestic flights. Ferries run between Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Formal bike lanes have expanded significantly, although riding during rush hour still requires attention.

New York holds Broadway, with about 40 large theaters in Midtown, and Off-Broadway, scattered across the city. World-class museums (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Whitney, American Museum of Natural History, Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum) draw visitors year-round. The music scene ranges from Harlem jazz to Bronx hip-hop, from classical halls at Lincoln Center to Brooklyn house parties.

The food scene reflects the diversity of the population. New York-style pizza, bagels with cream cheese, pastrami on rye in delicatessens, dim sum in Chinatown and Flushing, Junior's-style cheesecake, Midtown halal food carts, and Washington Heights Cuban food form a daily menu. Fine dining restaurants compete at three Michelin stars with any city in the world.

Annual events: Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Times Square New Year's Eve, US Open tennis in Flushing Meadows, New York Marathon, West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, Pride March in June, Tribeca Festival, Halloween Parade in the Village. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are UNESCO World Heritage sites, symbols of the country's immigrant history.

New York City is the historic gateway for immigration to the United States and remains one of the most diverse cities on the planet, with approximately 36% of the population born abroad. The largest foreign-born community today is Dominican, concentrated in Washington Heights and Inwood in Manhattan and in the Bronx, with strong commercial and political visibility. Chinese and Fujianese immigrants form the second largest group, spread across three Chinatowns: the historic one in Manhattan, Flushing in Queens, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Mexicans grew significantly from the 1990s onward, establishing themselves in Corona, Jackson Heights, and East Harlem, while Jamaicans, Haitians, and Trinidadians shape Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Canarsie in Brooklyn. Ecuadorians, Colombians, and Indians dominate the stretch from Jackson Heights to Elmhurst, and Bangladeshis consolidated themselves in Parkchester and Jamaica over the past two decades.

The legal and social support infrastructure is one of the densest in the world. The New York Immigration Coalition unites more than 200 organizations, and groups such as Make the Road New York, NICE (New Immigrant Community Empowerment), Catholic Charities Community Services, and the MinKwon Center provide assistance with asylum applications, DACA renewals, deportation defense, and English courses. The city maintains the municipal IDNYC program and the ActionNYC unit, which connects residents to free attorneys. Consulates General from virtually every relevant country are present, facilitating passport renewal, civil registration, and emergency assistance.