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West Salem, WI

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


West Salem is a somewhat small village located in the state of Wisconsin. With a population of 5,289 people and just one neighborhood, West Salem is the 154th largest community in Wisconsin.

Occupations and Workforce

Unlike some villages where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, West Salem is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, West Salem is a village of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in West Salem who work in office and administrative support (14.44%), teaching (10.95%), and computer science and math (9.84%).

Also of interest is that West Salem 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: 9.25% 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

West Salem is a small village, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.

Demographics

The population of West Salem is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 38.37% of adults in West Salem have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in West Salem in 2022 was $38,310, which is upper middle income relative to Wisconsin and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $153,240 for a family of four. However, West Salem contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call West Salem home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of West Salem residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in West Salem include German, Norwegian, Irish, Polish, and English.

The most common language spoken in West Salem is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Norwegian and German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 18.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Norwegian ancestry and 44.1% have German ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 6.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.7% of the neighborhoods in America.

The Neighbors

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 West Salem are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 60.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 2.4% 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 73.8% 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, 47.3% 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 18.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.7%), and 15.3% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.2% of households. Some people also speak Polish (6.7%).

Ethnicity / Ancestry

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 West Salem, WI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (44.1%). There are also a number of people of Norwegian ancestry (18.6%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.5%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (7.4%), along with some English ancestry residents (4.3%), among others.

Getting to Work

How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (58.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (87.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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Economics & Demographics include:
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Commute To Work
Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
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Crime includes:
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Schools include:
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