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.
Masontown is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 505 people and just one neighborhood, Masontown is the 197th largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Masontown is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 46.15% of the Masontown workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Masontown is a town of sales and office workers, construction workers and builders, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Masontown who work in sales jobs (20.00%), farm management occupations (10.77%), and office and administrative support (9.74%).
Of important note, Masontown is also a town of artists. Masontown has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Masontown’s character.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 11.79% 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
In Masontown, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 35.44 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Being a small town, Masontown does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
In terms of college education, the citizens of Masontown rank slightly lower than the national average. 15.11% of adults 25 and older in Masontown have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, while 21.84% of adults have a 4-year degree or higher in the average American community.
The per capita income in Masontown in 2022 was $29,642, which is upper middle income relative to West Virginia, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $118,568 for a family of four. However, Masontown contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Masontown home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Masontown residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Masontown include German, European, Italian, English, and Irish.
The most common language spoken in Masontown is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
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 Masontown 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. In addition, 9.0% 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 52.6% 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, 34.8% 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 27.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (19.2%), and 16.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.3% of households. Some people also speak Italian (4.5%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Masontown, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (22.3%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (15.5%), and residents who report English roots (10.4%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (5.0%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (2.6%), 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 between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (84.0%) 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 (9.4%) . 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.
