Raysal is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 364 people and just one neighborhood, Raysal is the 222nd largest community in West Virginia.
When you are in Raysal, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 74.44% of Raysal’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Raysal is a town of transportation and shipping workers, construction workers and builders, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Raysal who work in management occupations (13.33%), law enforcement and fire fighting (12.22%), and office and administrative support (0.00%).
Raysal’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
The town 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, Raysal has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Raysal a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Raysal is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Raysal, the average commute to work is 50.50 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Raysal is a very car-oriented town. 100.00% of residents commute to work in a private automobile rather than by other means, such as public transit, bicycling, or walking. This is because Raysal is a small town , and most people who live here have to drive out of town for work, and the town population is not large nor dense enough to support an extensive public transportation system. Raysal has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
Raysal 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 Raysal has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 0.00% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Raysal in 2022 was $26,163, which is middle income relative to West Virginia, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $104,652 for a family of four. However, Raysal contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Raysal home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Raysal residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Raysal include Italian, German, Irish, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
The most common language spoken in Raysal is English. Other important languages spoken here include African languages and Arabic.
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.
There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (56.2%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
The neighborhood is unique for having just 5.3% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.1% of America's neighborhoods.
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 31.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.6% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 Raysal are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 56.6% 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, 43.8% 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 29.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.6%), and 10.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households.
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 Raysal, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (5.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (4.0%), and residents who report English roots (1.9%).
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (46.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.6%) 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.