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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 717 people and just one neighborhood, Essex is the 378th largest community in Iowa. Essex has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.

Occupations and Workforce

Essex is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Essex is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Essex who work in management occupations (13.37%), office and administrative support (10.64%), and teaching (9.41%).

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.

One of the benefits of Essex is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 18.94 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.

As is often the case in a small city, Essex doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.

Demographics

The citizens of Essex are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 16.33% of adults in Essex have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree

The per capita income in Essex in 2022 was $33,671, which is lower middle income relative to Iowa, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $134,684 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 13.94% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Essex include German, Irish, English, Swedish, and European.

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.

Car Ownership

We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 39.5% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 98.0% of the neighborhoods in the nation.

Real Estate

Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 10 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 97.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods. 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.

People

If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Essex is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in IA, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 85.3% of the neighborhoods in Iowa. If you are considering retiring to Iowa, this is a good neighborhood to look at.

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, 11.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Swedish ancestry and 1.7% have Danish ancestry.

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 Essex are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 46.4% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 3.3% 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 69.9% 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, 36.6% 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 24.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.3%), and 12.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.4% 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 (30.4%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.5%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (11.2%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (3.1%), among others.

Getting to Work

Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (46.3% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (83.4%) 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 (6.6%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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