Iowa City is also a major college town with a large number of people who are 18 years or older and attending college. As is often the case in college towns, the many students that live in Iowa City have a strong influence on the local culture and entertainment scene, which may seem dormant by comparison in the summer months when much of the student population is away. In the fall, the return of students has a reinvigorating effect on the community. Because colleges are lasting institutions, they have a stabilizing effect on the economy by providing direct local benefits such as jobs for faculty and staff and spending by students. Iowa City’s economy is one such example of this.
Not only is Iowa City a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a very large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. That’s because Iowa City is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Iowa City a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
One of the benefits of Iowa City is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 18.69 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.
A lot of people in Iowa City take the bus for their daily commute. For the size of the city, the number of people who use public transportation is quite high. For many people in Iowa City, this fills their need for low-cost transportation.
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Iowa City, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Iowa City is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 60.54% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Iowa City in 2022 was $37,842, which is middle income relative to Iowa and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $151,368 for a family of four. However, Iowa City contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Iowa City is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Iowa City home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Iowa City residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Iowa City include German, Irish, English, Norwegian, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Iowa City is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Arabic.
