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.
Fairfield is a tiny borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 536 people and just one neighborhood, Fairfield is the 974th largest community in Pennsylvania. Much of the housing stock in Fairfield was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Fairfield, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 35.32% of Fairfield’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Fairfield is a borough of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Fairfield who work in office and administrative support (11.52%), food service (7.81%), and sales jobs (5.58%).
Also of interest is that Fairfield has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 8.95% 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
Overall, Fairfield’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
One downside of living in Fairfield is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Fairfield, the average commute to work is 32.12 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small borough, Fairfield doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Fairfield overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Fairfield, 21.41% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Fairfield in 2022 was $29,324, which is lower middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $117,296 for a family of four. However, Fairfield contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Fairfield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Fairfield residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Fairfield include German, Irish, English, Italian, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Fairfield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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 Fairfield, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Car Ownership
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 37.0% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 97.1% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Welsh ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Welsh ancestry.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Fairfield are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 53.5% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.1% 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, 33.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 32.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.4%), and 11.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Fairfield, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (26.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (11.2%), and residents who report English roots (7.7%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (2.4%), along with some Scots-Irish ancestry residents (2.2%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (28.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.3%) 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 (5.1%) . 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.
