This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Williamson is a very small city located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 2,831 people and just one neighborhood, Williamson is the 70th largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Williamson is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Williamson is a city of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Williamson who work in healthcare suport services (15.34%), sales jobs (12.47%), and food service (9.23%).
Of important note, Williamson is also a city of artists. Williamson has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Williamson’s character.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 7.83% 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.
Setting & Lifestyle
In Williamson, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 32.46 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small city, Williamson doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
In Williamson, just 11.20% of people have at least a bachelor's degree, which is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Williamson in 2022 was $25,299, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $101,196 for a family of four. However, Williamson contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Williamson also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 32.31% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Williamson is a somewhat ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Williamson home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Williamson residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Williamson include English, Irish, German, British, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Williamson is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Williamson, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
One of the unique characteristics of the neighborhood revealed by analysis is that the per capita income of residents here is lower than that found in 98.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, with a nice mix of college students, safety from crime, and decent walkability, the neighborhood rates highly as a college student friendly place to live, and one that college students and their parents may want to consider. NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that it rates more highly for a good place for college students to live than 85.0% of the neighborhoods in WV. This often also means that the area has certain amenities and services geared towards college students, from undergraduates to graduate students.
The Neighbors
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 Williamson are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 98.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 19.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 68.1% 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, 40.5% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 21.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (20.9%), and 17.6% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.3% of households. Some people also speak Italian (5.8%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Williamson, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (13.4%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (4.1%), and residents who report Scots-Irish roots (2.4%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (1.7%), along with some British ancestry residents (1.5%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 (29.1% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (82.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (5.8%) and 5.1% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors 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.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
