Each article takes one question about New York City and works out what the public data can say about it. Every article ships with interactive charts, the dataset it used and the code that reproduces its numbers, and lists the source of every external figure it quotes.
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Far fewer people are killed on New York City's streets on foot and in cars than thirty years ago, but more on two wheels. Traffic deaths fell from about 415 a year in the late 1990s to 240 in the early 2020s, while deaths on motorcycles, mopeds, motor scooters and bicycles rose from about 47 a year to 71. This year, to 11 October, the NYPD counts 151 traffic deaths, against 155 a year earlier.
New York records fewer shootings than at any time in the NYPD's open files, but not fewer assaults. So far this year, to 4 October 2026, murders are down 20% on 2025 and shootings 11%, a gap that could still be chance; felony assaults are level. Over all of 2025 there were 29,838, 44% more than in 2019 and the most recorded in a quarter-century, though the offence now covers more kinds of attack.
Last winter's record in no-heat complaints was not just the cold: at the pre-pandemic rate its weather would have brought about 206,000 complaints, and it brought 305,000, about half above by most of our checks. More came from the same buildings, inspectors found twice as many violations, and the City's survey shows heat failing more often lately, most of all in public housing.
Ambulance response to calls ultimately classed as life-threatening rose by a minute and three-quarters in fiscal 2026, to the slowest year in the city's figures since 1988. The extra time appears before and after an ambulance is assigned, not in the 911 call. For calls urgent from the start the rise was about a minute, most of it after assignment, as ambulance capacity fell and calls did not rise.
A rent freeze can't pick its tenants, and how its value splits depends on the yardstick: in dollars, better-off households get a little more than their share, because they pay higher rents; against income, the poorest gain the most. Three in ten stabilized households earn six figures, and two in three with any income fall below 80% of HUD's income limit for their household size.
Twenty months in, fewer vehicles are entering Manhattan's toll zone than in its first year, but a count at the door is not a measure of congestion. The speed measures answer different questions: the city's yellow-taxi indicator fell, the state's before-and-after figures rose, and a Google Maps study estimates the zone is faster than it would have been without the toll.
New York City has more payroll jobs than ever, a record 4.9 million in July 2026, and health care is its largest sector. The census says what the 4.2 million residents who work actually do and how that changed since 1990: far less factory and clerical work, far more professional and care work, and median annual earnings that rose surprisingly little for a workforce so transformed.
Fewer New Yorkers are raising small children: about 543,000 under six lived in the five boroughs in 2024, 116,000 fewer than in 2015, and births kept falling into 2026. Seven in ten of those living with a parent have every resident parent in the labor force, and before age three, when public help is thinnest, a year of care at the State's rate fits the 7% yardstick for one family in eight.
New York is not emptying out; it runs a steady exchange with the rest of the country that ends in a loss every year, a net 114,000 people in the year to July 2025. Arrivals are younger and more often graduates than leavers, and on balance the city loses children. Because the domestic loss recurs, births and above all immigration decide whether the city grows, and immigration is what swung.
Working from home has settled rather than faded, and it has settled on the better paid. In 2026 about a quarter of New Yorkers at work spend some or all of the week working from home, one in ten all of it, as in 2025. Before the pandemic the share was the same at every pay level; now it climbs with pay. Seven in eight still travel to work, and the commute that shrank is the one to Manhattan.
The hour-long commute in New York is a matter of address and vehicle far more than pay. A quarter of the city's commuters spend an hour or more each way, mostly subway and bus riders from the outer boroughs; about half the racial gap remains after adjusting for where people live, travel and work; the pattern has held since 1990, and nothing in the MTA's 2026 figures says the trip got quicker.
A six-figure income doesn't settle whether a New York household can afford its rent. About 93,000 six-figure renter households pay 30% or more of their income in rent; the most exposed are roommates pooling smaller incomes and recent movers. Count tax and a basic budget, and families with children join them, most from under the official line. Since 2024, rents have outpaced pay.
