Raysal is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 364 people and just one neighborhood, Raysal is the 222nd largest community in West Virginia.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Raysal is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 74.44% of the Raysal workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Raysal is a town of transportation and shipping workers, construction workers and builders, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Raysal who work in management occupations (13.33%), law enforcement and fire fighting (12.22%), and office and administrative support (0.00%).
Raysal’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
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!) Raysal 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. Raysal has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Raysal than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Raysal may be for you.
In Raysal, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 50.50 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Raysal is a small town, and as is often the case with smaller towns, the population isn't large or dense enough to support much in the way of a public transportation system. In fact, there are many rural roads around Raysal, which makes walking or biking to and from work a bit difficult. This makes for a very car-oriented town: 100.00% of residents commute to work by private automobile, and people often drive out of town for work, shopping, and other activities.
Raysal is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
The population of Raysal has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 0.00% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Raysal in 2022 was $26,163, which is middle income relative to West Virginia, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $104,652 for a family of four. However, Raysal contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Raysal home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Raysal residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Raysal include Italian, German, Irish, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
The most common language spoken in Raysal is English. Other important languages spoken here include African languages and Arabic.
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.
There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (56.2%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research revealed that 94.7% of the adult residents in the neighborhood do not have a 4-year college degree, which is a lower rate of college graduated adults than found in 97.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, if you're looking for a great spot to raise a family, then look no further than the neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that the combination of good quality public schools, above-average safety from crime, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family homes, help make this neighborhood among the top 15.0% of family-friendly neighborhoods across the state of West Virginia. In addition, there are a high proportion of other families with school-aged children living here, making it easy for parents and their children to socialize and develop a sense of community support. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools, in part due to the educational attainment of the parents here, who vote in support of the public schools.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 31.3%, which is higher than 95.6% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Some neighborhoods have more internal cohesiveness than others. While other neighborhoods feel like a collection of strangers who just happen to live near each other. Sometimes this comes down to not only the personalities of the people in a place, but how long people have been together in that neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research has revealed some interesting things about the rootedness of people in the neighborhood. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 Raysal are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 56.6% 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, 43.8% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 29.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.6%), and 10.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households.
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 Raysal, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (5.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (4.0%), and residents who report English roots (1.9%).
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 (46.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.6%) 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.