Matewan is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 381 people and just one neighborhood, Matewan is the 214th largest community in West Virginia.
Matewan is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 90.10% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Matewan is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Matewan who work in food service (25.74%), sales jobs (20.79%), and office and administrative support (11.88%).
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, Matewan is worth considering.
One of the benefits of Matewan is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 18.94 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
Matewan 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 Matewan has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 5.31% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Matewan in 2022 was $14,584, which is low income relative to West Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $58,336 for a family of four. Matewan also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 44.15% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Matewan is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Matewan home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Matewan residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Matewan include English, Irish, German, Italian, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Matewan is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish 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.
The neighborhood stands out for having an average per capita income lower than 97.8% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
In addition, the neighborhood is unique for having just 4.9% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.4% of America's neighborhoods.
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 11.7% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.1% of all neighborhoods in America.
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.8% of all neighborhoods in America, with 35.3% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
From major sales accounts to fast-food workers, sales and service employees are often the backbone of the local economy. In the neighborhood, they truly stand out. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis identifies this neighborhood as having a higher percentage of sales and service workers than 95.7% of all American 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 Matewan are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 97.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 43.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 91.1% 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, 38.1% 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 manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 37.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (14.6%), and 9.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.7% of households. Some people also speak Chinese (2.5%).
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 Matewan, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (12.7%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (6.3%), and residents who report German roots (4.5%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (3.6%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (1.2%), among others.
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 between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans. However, there is also a significant group of residents (11.7%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (82.7%) 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 (8.9%) and 8.4% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.