This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Thoreau is a very small town located in the state of New Mexico. With a population of 2,367 people and just one neighborhood, Thoreau is the 67th largest community in New Mexico.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Thoreau is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Thoreau is a town of sales and office workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Thoreau who work in office and administrative support (19.26%), sales jobs (8.97%), and healthcare (7.50%).
A relatively large number of people in Thoreau telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 17.21% 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.
Setting & Lifestyle
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, Thoreau has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Thoreau a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Thoreau, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 36.30 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Thoreau does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The population of Thoreau has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 5.74% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Thoreau in 2022 was $15,845, which is low income relative to New Mexico and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $63,380 for a family of four. However, Thoreau contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Thoreau also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 49.85% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Thoreau is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Thoreau home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Thoreau residents report their race to be Native American, followed by White. Thoreau also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 31.94% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Thoreau include Danish, African, German, Irish, and Yugoslavian.
The most common language spoken in Thoreau is English. Other important languages spoken here include Navajo and Native American languages.
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.
People
The neighborhood stands out for having an average per capita income lower than 95.2% of the neighborhoods in the United States. Also of note, 72.3% of the children in this area live in poverty; an extraordinarily high percentage compared to other neighborhoods in the nation. In a nation where approximately one in four children grows up in poverty, this neighborhood stands out for the depth of the problem manifested here.
In addition, neighborhoodScout's exclusive research revealed that 93.1% 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 95.3% of the neighborhoods in America.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 98.1% of all neighborhoods in America, with 42.5% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Native American ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 67.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Native American ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 54.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Native American languages at home. This is a higher percentage than 99.9% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 Thoreau are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 95.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 72.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 98.8% 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, 32.7% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 23.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (22.5%), and 21.8% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is Native American languages, spoken by 54.6% of households. Some people also speak English (51.9%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Thoreau, NM, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Native American (67.1%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (28.7%), and residents who report Danish roots (1.5%).
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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.8% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (73.7%) 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 (5.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
