Merriam is a somewhat small city located in the state of Kansas. With a population of 11,156 people and three constituent neighborhoods, Merriam is the 34th largest community in Kansas.

Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Merriam is neither predominently one or the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Merriam is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Merriam who work in office and administrative support jobs (18.15%), sales jobs (10.60%), and management occupations (9.72%).

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

One of the benefits of Merriam is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 18.02 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.

Merriam is a small city, and as is often the case with smaller towns, the population isn't large or dense enough to support much in the way of a public transportation system. In fact, there are many rural roads around Merriam, which makes walking or biking to and from work a bit difficult. This makes for a very car-oriented town: 98.46% of residents commute to work by private automobile, and people often drive out of town for work, shopping, and other activities.

Being a small city, Merriam does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.

Merriam Information and Demographics

The citizens of Merriam are very well educated compared to the average community in the nation: 34.42% of adults in Merriam have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in Merriam in 2000 was $23,988, which is wealthy relative to Kansas, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $95,952 for a family of four.

The people who call Merriam home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Merriam is White, followed by African-American. Important ancestries of people in Merriam include German, English, Irish, Italian, Swedish, and French.

The most common language spoken in Merriam is English. Some people also speak Spanish.