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Essex, IA

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





Overview


Essex is a tiny city located in the state of Iowa. With a population of 729 people and just one neighborhood, Essex is the 378th largest community in Iowa. Much of the housing stock in Essex was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.

Occupations and Workforce

Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Essex is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 39.28% of the Essex workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Essex is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Essex who work in management occupations (12.29%), office and administrative support (9.40%), and sales jobs (8.67%).

Setting & Lifestyle

Residents will find that the city is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Essex is worth considering.

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

Demographics

The citizens of Essex are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 14.31% of adults in Essex have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree

The per capita income in Essex in 2022 was $34,077, which is middle income relative to Iowa and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $136,308 for a family of four. However, Essex contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Essex is a somewhat ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Essex home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Essex residents report their race to be White. Essex also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 10.69% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Essex include German, Irish, English, Swedish, and Danish.

The most common language spoken in Essex is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.

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.

Real Estate

This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 10 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 97.2% of America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.

Car Ownership

American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 34.8% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 96.0% of the neighborhoods in the nation.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swedish and Danish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 11.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Swedish ancestry and 2.0% have Danish ancestry.

The Neighbors

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 Essex are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 46.9% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 4.1% 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 67.6% of America's neighborhoods.

What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.

In the neighborhood, 33.9% 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 27.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.7%), and 13.8% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.2% of households.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

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 Essex, IA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (32.7%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (15.5%), and residents who report Swedish roots (11.1%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (10.3%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (2.1%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (44.8% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (81.9%) 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 (6.3%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


Real Estate includes:
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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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