La Mesa is a tiny town located in the state of New Mexico. With a population of 649 people and just one neighborhood, La Mesa is the 129th largest community in New Mexico.
When you are in La Mesa, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 35.34% of La Mesa’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, La Mesa is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in La Mesa who work in sales jobs (17.29%), healthcare suport services (9.77%), and business and financial occupations (9.77%).
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, La Mesa is worth considering.
La Mesa is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
The population of La Mesa has a very low overall level of education: only 6.08% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in La Mesa in 2022 was $19,576, which is low income relative to New Mexico and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $78,304 for a family of four. However, La Mesa contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
La Mesa is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call La Mesa home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in La Mesa, accounting for 96.90% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of La Mesa residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in La Mesa include German, Italian, Scots-Irish, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
In addition, La Mesa has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (37.59%).
The most common language spoken in La Mesa is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Italian.
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.
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 94.7% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.5% of all American neighborhoods.
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 46.4% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 99.3% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 33.2%, which is higher than 96.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
In addition, this neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 28 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 93.1% of America.
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 3.6% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 95.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Mexican and French ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 85.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Mexican ancestry and 11.2% have French ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 59.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Spanish at home. This is a higher percentage than 95.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 La Mesa are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 74.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 30.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 24.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.2%), and 16.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 59.9% of households. Some people also speak English (39.7%).
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in La Mesa, NM, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (85.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (12.0%), and residents who report French roots (11.2%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (5.8%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (1.8%), among others. In addition, 25.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (54.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (94.7%) 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.