This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Watchung is a somewhat small borough located in the state of New Jersey. With a population of 6,428 people and just one neighborhood, Watchung is the 271st largest community in New Jersey.
Watchung home prices are not only among the most expensive in New Jersey, but Watchung real estate also consistently ranks among the most expensive in America.
Occupations and Workforce
Watchung is a decidedly white-collar borough, with fully 88.63% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Watchung is a borough of managers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Watchung who work in management occupations (19.06%), business and financial occupations (10.65%), and office and administrative support (10.34%).
A relatively large number of people in Watchung telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 24.54% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Watchung is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Watchung really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Watchung perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.
One downside of living in Watchung, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 31.34 minutes every day commuting to work. However, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
Despite being a small borough, Watchung has a lot of people using the bus to get to and from work every day. Most of these people on the bus are using it to get to good jobs in other cities.
Demographics
If knowledge is power, Watchung is a pretty powerful place. 60.30% of the adults in Watchung have earned a 4-year college degree, masters degree, MD, law degree, or even PhD. Compare that to the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns.
The per capita income in Watchung in 2022 was $73,470, which is wealthy relative to New Jersey and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $293,880 for a family of four.
Watchung is a very ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Watchung home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Watchung residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Watchung include Italian, Irish, Polish, German, and English.
Watchung also has a high percentage of its population that was born in another country: 20.32%.
The most common language spoken in Watchung is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Langs. of India.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
People
In a nation where 1 out of every 4 children lives in poverty, the neighborhood stands out as being ranked among the lowest 0.0% of neighborhoods affected by this global issue.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Portuguese and Czechoslovakian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry and 0.7% have Czechoslovakian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 3.5% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Korean at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Watchung are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 94.9% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 57.8% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 18.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (12.5%), and 11.4% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 80.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Langs. of India and Korean.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Watchung, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Italian (19.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (17.0%), and residents who report Asian roots (13.8%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (9.0%), along with some German ancestry residents (9.0%), among others. In addition, 20.3% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (31.5% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (63.1%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
