Soap Lake is a very small city located in the state of Washington. With a population of 1,703 people and just one neighborhood, Soap Lake is the 234th largest community in Washington.
Soap Lake is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Soap Lake is a city of sales and office workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Soap Lake who work in sales jobs (23.62%), office and administrative support (12.19%), and management occupations (10.48%).
You will also find that a lot of people in Soap Lake work in agricultural jobs - much more than in the average community in America. This will be quite apparent if you drive around town, as much of the landscape is dedicated to farms.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 8.17% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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.
The city is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Soap Lake has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Soap Lake a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
In Soap Lake, just 6.95% of people over 25 hold a college degree, which is very low compared to the rest of the nation, whereas the average among all cities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Soap Lake in 2022 was $28,738, which is lower middle income relative to Washington and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $114,952 for a family of four. However, Soap Lake contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Soap Lake is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Soap Lake home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Soap Lake residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Soap Lake also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 31.13% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Soap Lake include German, English, Irish, Norwegian, and French.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Soap Lake's cultural character, accounting for 15.38% of the city’s population.
The most common language spoken in Soap Lake is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Slavic languages.
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.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 98.7% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 34.9% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 96.1% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Ukrainian and Norwegian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Ukrainian ancestry and 6.9% have Norwegian 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 Soap Lake are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 60.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 52.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 34.7% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 21.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (21.1%), and 14.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 74.0% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (16.7%).
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 Soap Lake, WA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (15.1%), and residents who report Mexican roots (8.9%), and some of the residents are also of Norwegian ancestry (6.9%), along with some Ukrainian ancestry residents (6.1%), among others. In addition, 17.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.2% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (68.1%) 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 (13.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.