I’m going to be at St. John’s University in New York on Tuesday, September 9, speaking on “New York, New York: Careers in the Big Apple.” Preparing for that talk, I did some comparisons between the NYC labor market and the rest of the country. Here’s one teaser: I looked at online help-wanted ads that contained the term “video production.” What I found is that New York City had 297 want-ads containing the term “video production,” more than double the 137 want ads in Los Angeles.

In fact, this accurately reflects the state of the movie/video industry in the two cities. According to stats from the BLS, employment in the “motion picture and sound recording industry” in the LA area is basically flat since 2007-2008. By contrast, employment in the “motion picture and sound recording industry” in New York City is up about 40% or so and still rising.