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.
West Pittston is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 4,648 people and just one neighborhood, West Pittston is the 328th largest community in Pennsylvania. Much of the housing stock in West Pittston was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some boroughs, West Pittston isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in West Pittston are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, West Pittston is a borough of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in West Pittston who work in office and administrative support (20.40%), management occupations (11.67%), and food service (7.88%).
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 7.88% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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
Demographics
In terms of college education, West Pittston 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: 31.04% of adults in West Pittston have a college degree.
The per capita income in West Pittston in 2022 was $34,768, which is middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $139,072 for a family of four. However, West Pittston contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call West Pittston home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of West Pittston residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in West Pittston include Irish, Italian, Polish, German, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in West Pittston is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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
If you find historic homes and neighborhoods attractive, you love the details, the history, and the charm, then you are sure to be interested in this neighborhood. With 64.3% of the residential real estate in the neighborhood built no later than 1939, and some built considerably earlier, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of historic residences than 97.5% of all neighborhoods in America. In this regard, this neighborhood truly stands out as special.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Irish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 29.9% have Irish ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 26.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 West Pittston are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 66.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 38.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 23.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (20.9%), and 17.2% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 91.5% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Polish, German/Yiddish and Arabic.
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 West Pittston, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (29.9%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (18.5%), and residents who report Polish roots (15.9%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (9.9%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (5.3%), 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 between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (48.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (78.0%) 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 (12.9%) . 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.
