Greenville is also a major college town with a large number of people who are 18 years or older and attending college. As is often the case in college towns, the many students that live in Greenville have a strong influence on the local culture and entertainment scene, which may seem dormant by comparison in the summer months when much of the student population is away. In the fall, the return of students has a reinvigorating effect on the community. Because colleges are lasting institutions, they have a stabilizing effect on the economy by providing direct local benefits such as jobs for faculty and staff and spending by students. Greenville’s economy is one such example of this.
Not only is Greenville a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a very large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. That’s because Greenville 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 Greenville 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 19.13 minutes getting to work every day.
The population of Greenville is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 39.27% of adults in Greenville have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Greenville in 2018 was $30,605, which is middle income relative to North Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $122,420 for a family of four. However, Greenville contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Greenville is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Greenville home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Greenville residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Greenville include English, Irish, German, Scots-Irish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Greenville is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Arabic.
