Elma is a very small city located in the state of Washington. With a population of 3,469 people and just one neighborhood, Elma is the 165th largest community in Washington.
Elma is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Elma is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Elma who work in office and administrative support (15.60%), management occupations (12.13%), and farm management occupations (10.57%).
Another important characteristic of Elma is that a lot of people work in agricultural jobs, especially compared to most other communities in America, and there are quite a number of farms in town.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 9.62% 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.
As is often the case in a small city, Elma doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The education level of Elma citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 19.08% of adults 25 and older in Elma have a college degree.
The per capita income in Elma in 2022 was $31,024, which is lower middle income relative to Washington, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $124,096 for a family of four. However, Elma contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Elma also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 35.72% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Elma is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Elma home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Elma residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Elma also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 16.70% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Elma include Irish, German, English, Norwegian, and Swedish.
The most common language spoken in Elma is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Elma, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 7.3% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 98.3% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Croatian and Russian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Croatian ancestry and 4.5% have Russian 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 Elma are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 52.0% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 9.3% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 52.5% of America'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, 31.1% 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 22.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.2%), and 19.4% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
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 86.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Elma, WA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.7%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (13.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (12.4%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (10.6%), along with some Norwegian ancestry residents (7.1%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (29.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (80.4%) 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 (7.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.