Lawton is a larger medium-sized city located in the state of Oklahoma. With a population of 91,542 people and 32 associated neighborhoods, Lawton is the sixth largest community in Oklahoma.
Lawton is a military town: the armed forces employs 13.50% of the workforce, making the military a major focus of life in the city. In the civilian sector, Healthcare and Retail are important in the local economy and are the city’s largest civilian employers, employing 19.65% and 11.34% of the civilian workforce respectively.
A relatively large number of people in Lawton telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 12.94% 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.
One thing noticeable about Lawton, although not a huge city, is that it has a large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile career starters. That’s because Lawton is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Lawton a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
Residents of the city have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 17.78 minutes getting to work every day.
The citizens of Lawton are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 22.49% of adults in Lawton having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Lawton in 2022 was $27,221, which is upper middle income relative to Oklahoma, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $108,884 for a family of four. However, Lawton contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Lawton is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Lawton home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lawton residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Lawton also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 16.00% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Lawton include German, Irish, English, Italian, and French.
The most common language spoken in Lawton is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.