New York ? More New Yorkers are out of work, and the cash-strapped city isn’t graduating a new class of police cadets this year. And yet crime is going down — way down.

New York City is heading toward its lowest number of murders in almost 50 years, and overall crime is also down, the New York Police Department said Friday.

The NYPD projects about 457 murders this year, the lowest total since the department first started keeping records in 1962.

And, overall crime is down nearly 12 percent from 2008, and 40 percent since 2001, the NYPD said.