West Gardiner is a very small town located in the state of Maine. With a population of 3,690 people and just one neighborhood, West Gardiner is the 120th largest community in Maine.
Unlike some towns, West Gardiner isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in West Gardiner are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, West Gardiner is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in West Gardiner who work in sales jobs (14.19%), management occupations (12.06%), and office and administrative support (11.45%).
Also of interest is that West Gardiner has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
A relatively large number of people in West Gardiner telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 12.39% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. 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.
Because of many things, West Gardiner is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making West Gardiner a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, West Gardiner has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, West Gardiner’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the country, making it one of the safest places to raise a family.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, West Gardiner has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes West Gardiner a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
In terms of college education, West Gardiner is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 31.18% of adults in West Gardiner have a college degree.
The per capita income in West Gardiner in 2022 was $43,370, which is upper middle income relative to Maine and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $173,480 for a family of four.
The people who call West Gardiner home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of West Gardiner residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in West Gardiner include English, Scandinavian, Irish, French, and Swedish.
The most common language spoken in West Gardiner is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian 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 West Gardiner, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
In a nation where 1 out of every 4 children lives in poverty, the neighborhood stands out as being ranked among the lowest 0.0% of neighborhoods affected by this global issue.
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 41.2% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 98.5% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more English and French ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 29.8% of this neighborhood's residents have English ancestry and 14.4% have French ancestry.
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 96.3% 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.
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 Gardiner are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 76.7% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% 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 100.0% 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, 36.5% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional 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 25.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (24.6%), and 13.8% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.3% of households. Some people also speak Italian (5.7%).
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 West Gardiner, ME, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (29.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (14.4%), and residents who report French roots (14.4%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (4.9%), along with some German ancestry residents (3.1%), among others.
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 (47.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (78.9%) 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 (6.0%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.