Mount Oliver is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 3,261 people and just one neighborhood, Mount Oliver is the 448th largest community in Pennsylvania. Mount Oliver has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Unlike some boroughs where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Mount Oliver is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Mount Oliver is a borough of professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Mount Oliver who work in food service (18.99%), sales jobs (11.29%), and management occupations (10.49%).
Also of interest is that Mount Oliver has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 8.15% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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.
One downside of living in Mount Oliver, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 30.68 minutes every day commuting to work. It is, however, a pedestrian-friendly borough. Many of its neighborhoods are dense enough and have amenities close enough together that people find it feasible to get around on foot. In addition, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
Despite the fact that it is a small borough, Mount Oliver has quite a few people who take public transportation – mostly the bus - for their daily commute to work. This helps to fill a real need in the borough for affordable transportation.
In terms of college education, Mount Oliver is nearly on par with the US average for all cities of 21.84%: 20.16% of adults 25 and older in Mount Oliver have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Mount Oliver in 2022 was $23,414, which is low income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $93,656 for a family of four. However, Mount Oliver contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Mount Oliver is an extremely ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Mount Oliver home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Mount Oliver residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Mount Oliver include Italian, German, Irish, Polish, and English.
The most common language spoken in Mount Oliver is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.
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.
Our research revealed that more commuters here take the bus to work (26.7% ride the bus) than 99.5% of all American neighborhoods. If you like the idea of leaving your car and home and hopping the bus to work, this might be a good neighborhood for you to consider.
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. 28.1% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 96.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Do you watch 'This Old House' on Public Television? Do you love the idea of fixing up a Colonial or Victorian era home, complete with the charm of yesteryear? Do you like to stroll or drive streets lined with gracious older residences? If you found yourself nodding yes to any of these questions, you are going to be interested in this unique neighborhood. The neighborhood stands out on a national scale for the sheer concentration of historic residences it contains: 59.4% of the residential real estate here was built from 1939 or earlier, some much earlier. This is a greater concentration of historic homes than 96.5% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Slovak ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Slovak ancestry.
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 Mount Oliver are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 82.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 64.5% 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, 37.0% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 33.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (22.0%), and 8.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 95.7% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.
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 Mount Oliver, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Italian (15.5%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (15.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (13.2%), and some of the residents are also of Puerto Rican ancestry (2.8%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (2.5%), 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 (41.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (43.8%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (26.7%) and 19.6% 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.