Colon is a very small village located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,200 people and just one neighborhood, Colon is the 452nd largest community in Michigan. Colon has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic villages in the country.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Colon is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 38.72% of the Colon workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Colon is a village of sales and office workers, service providers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Colon who work in office and administrative support (15.49%), food service (9.60%), and sales jobs (7.91%).
Also of interest is that Colon has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 12.50% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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.
It is a fairly quiet village because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Colon has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Colon has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Colon than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Colon may be for you.
Being a small village, Colon does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The percentage of adults in Colon who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 17.56% of the adults in Colon have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Colon in 2022 was $26,518, which is lower middle income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $106,072 for a family of four. However, Colon contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Colon home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Colon residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Colon include German, European, Irish, English, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Colon is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
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 Colon, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
If your dream is to be able to ride your bike to work each day, look no further than this unique neighborhood. With 14.2% of residents in the neighborhood commuting on a bicycle to and from work daily, this neighborhood has more bicycle commuters than 99.9% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis.
Also, our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (24.2%) than in 96.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
More people work in manufacturing and as laborers here in the neighborhood than in 99.5% of the neighborhoods in America. Despite the loss of manufacturing jobs across the nation, this neighborhood remains a place where, compared to other parts of the country, you will find many laborers and manufacturers.
Most American households own a car or other vehicle. Many own two cars or perhaps three. In the United States, it is useful to have an automobile not only for commuting, but also for shopping and getting to other services one needs. But NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed that households in the neighborhood have a highly unusual car ownership. 33.8% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swiss and German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 13.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Swiss ancestry and 34.1% have German ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 26.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Colon are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 70.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.2% 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, 54.1% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 16.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (15.4%), and 14.2% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
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 72.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Italian.
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 Colon, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (34.1%). There are also a number of people of Swiss ancestry (13.3%), and residents who report English roots (7.5%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.6%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (3.3%), among others.
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 (35.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (42.9%) 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 (24.2%) and 14.2% of residents also bicycle for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.