Wakefield is a tiny town located in the state of Virginia. With a population of 747 people and just one neighborhood, Wakefield is the 309th largest community in Virginia.
Wakefield is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Wakefield is a town of service providers, production and manufacturing workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Wakefield who work in healthcare suport services (17.79%), law enforcement and fire fighting (9.05%), and food service (8.28%).
Also of interest is that Wakefield has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Wakefield has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Wakefield has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Wakefield than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Wakefield may be for you.
One downside of living in Wakefield, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 41.03 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Wakefield does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
In terms of college education, Wakefield is somewhat better educated than the 21.84% who have a 4-year degree or higher in the typical US community: 28.48% of adults 25 and older in the town have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Wakefield in 2022 was $36,598, which is middle income relative to Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $146,392 for a family of four. However, Wakefield contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Wakefield is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Wakefield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Wakefield residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Wakefield include African, Irish, English, German, and British.
The most common language spoken in Wakefield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
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.
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 88.2% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 96.2% of all American neighborhoods.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more African and Sub-Saharan African ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 28.9% of this neighborhood's residents have African ancestry and 28.9% have Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
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 Wakefield are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 66.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 18.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 67.1% 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, 32.9% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 23.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (22.7%), and 20.6% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.4% 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 Wakefield, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Sub-Saharan African (28.9%). There are also a number of people of African ancestry (28.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (12.6%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (7.8%), along with some German ancestry residents (6.4%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (55.9% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (88.2%) 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 (6.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.