Lake Waccamaw is a very small town located in the state of North Carolina. With a population of 1,273 people and just one neighborhood, Lake Waccamaw is the 373rd largest community in North Carolina.
Lake Waccamaw is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 88.64% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Lake Waccamaw is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Lake Waccamaw who work in healthcare (22.35%), sales jobs (11.93%), and teaching (10.80%).
Another notable thing is that Lake Waccamaw is an extremely popular destination for tourists and seasonal residents. So much of the population is seasonal such that the town’s population swells significantly during the vacation season, and drops again when the season ends. Because of this, much of the local economy is centered around tourism; some businesses may be operated only during the high season. During the low season, year-round residents will notice that the city is a substantially quieter place to live.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Lake Waccamaw has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Lake Waccamaw a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
Being a small town, Lake Waccamaw does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The education level of Lake Waccamaw citizens is substantially higher than the typical US community, as 33.49% of adults in Lake Waccamaw have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Lake Waccamaw in 2022 was $43,990, which is wealthy relative to North Carolina, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $175,960 for a family of four. However, Lake Waccamaw contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Lake Waccamaw is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Lake Waccamaw home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lake Waccamaw residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Lake Waccamaw include English, Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish, and German.
The most common language spoken in Lake Waccamaw is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 35.2%, which is higher than 96.5% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Our research reveals that 89.3% of commuters who live in the neighborhood get to work each day by driving alone in their automobiles, which is a higher proportion than 95.4% of U.S. neighborhoods.
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Lake Waccamaw 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 NC, 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 86.1% of the neighborhoods in North Carolina. If you are considering retiring to North Carolina, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Native American and Scots-Irish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 19.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Native American ancestry and 4.7% have Scots-Irish ancestry.
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 Lake Waccamaw are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 40.4% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 6.1% 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 61.1% of America'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, 46.7% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 20.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (18.2%), and 13.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.4% of households.
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 Lake Waccamaw, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Native American (19.9%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (10.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (5.1%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (4.7%), along with some German ancestry residents (3.5%), among others.
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 (32.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (89.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.