Shelton is a medium-sized coastal town (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of Connecticut. With a population of 38,101 people and seven constituent neighborhoods, Shelton is the 25th largest community in Connecticut.

Shelton is neither predominently blue-collar or white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Shelton is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Shelton who work in office and administrative support jobs (16.49%), management occupations (11.76%), and sales jobs (10.69%).

Also of interest is that Shelton has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

In addition, Shelton is home to many people who could be described as "urban sophisticates." Urban sophisticates are educated, wealthy, executives and professionals, who have urbane tastes in books, food, and travel, whether they actually live in a big city, or choose to reside in a small town. In big or medium-sized cities, urban sophisticates tend to frequent art institutions such as opera, symphonies, ballet, live theatre, and museums.

The town is also nautical, which means that parts of Shelton are somewhat historic and bounded by the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and tidal rivers. Such areas are often places that visitors and locals go for waterfront activities or taking in the scenery.

Shelton is a very car-oriented town: 97.1% of people use private automobiles to get to and from work. In fact, the general consensus among people in Shelton is that if you need to get anywhere, you're going to have to drive. The landscape is very car-oriented, and features shopping centers, strip malls, parking lots, and wide streets. Pedestrians are discouraged by the fact that sidewalks are not always present, which makes attempts at walking downright daunting in certain parts of town.

Shelton is a decent-sized town, yet no one gets to work using public transit, because the town has no real transit system.

Shelton Information and Demographics

The education level of Shelton citizens is substantially higher than the average US city or town, as 29.91% of adults in Shelton have at least a bachelor's degree.

The per capita income in Shelton in 2000 was $29,893, which is upper middle income relative to Connecticut, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $119,572 for a family of four. However, Shelton contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Shelton home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Shelton is White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Shelton include Italian, Irish, Polish, German, English, Slovak, Hungarian, and Portuguese.

The languages spoken by people in Shelton 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 Shelton is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Italian, and Polish.