Taft is a very small city located in the state of Texas. With a population of 2,818 people and just one neighborhood, Taft is the 540th largest community in Texas.
Unlike some cities, Taft isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Taft are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Taft is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Taft who work in maintenance occupations (13.20%), sales jobs (12.27%), and healthcare suport services (11.59%).
As is often the case in a small city, Taft doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The percentage of people in Taft with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 10.27% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Taft in 2018 was $23,906, which is lower middle income relative to Texas and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $95,624 for a family of four. However, Taft contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Taft is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Taft 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 Taft, accounting for 81.05% of the city’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Taft residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Taft include German, Irish, English, Swedish, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Taft is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 81.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Mexican ancestry.
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 Taft are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 80.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 25.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 75.5% of U.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, 31.0% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 28.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.7%), and 20.0% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 54.6% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (44.9%).
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 Taft, TX, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (81.4%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (7.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (2.1%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (1.1%).
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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (83.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (11.3%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
