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New York's position at the mouth of the Hudson River enabled rapid development of the port area and associated industries. It's importance increased in 1825, with the opening of the Erie Canal, allowing the city became the gateway between the Great Lakes and the agricultural Great Plains and to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic terms. Immigrants from central Europe and the Orient contributed to the development of a thriving textile industry during the 19th century. The city experienced a boom in the 1920s, as evidenced by the number of sky-scrapers and grand public buildings dating from this era. The stock market crash of 1929 and an overall economic downturn led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment in some areas soared to 20% and in many sectors took decades to fully recover.

Since the 1950s, port activity in New York Harbour has all but ceased and freight is now handled at Port Newark-Marine Terminal in New Jersey, at the north of Staten Island. During the 1960s and 70s, a crisis hit the industrial areas of the Bronx and Queens and many factories, struggling against competition from overseas, closed down or relocated their operations. Between 1953 and 1992, New York lost some 700,000 jobs in the industrial sector. Recent years have seen something of a renaissance, with industry centred on printing, chemicals, textiles and electronics. Today, there are over 230,000 jobs in New York's industrial sector.

New York is home to the headquarters of many international companies. The United Nations is based in New York, as is the head office of the charity UNICEF. The New York Stock Exchange is the largest in the world in terms of dollar volume and the city has a deserved reputation as a financial centre, housing many major banks and financial institutions. The New York film industry is the second largest in the US, after Hollywood. The estimated Gross Product of New York City, at $450 billion, is higher than the GDP of Switzerland and the Gross State Product of the New York metropolitan region exceeds that of every U.S. state except California.