Kearny is a medium-sized coastal town (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of New Jersey. With a population of 40,513 people and 12 constituent neighborhoods, Kearny is the 33rd largest community in New Jersey. Kearny has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.

Kearny is neither predominently blue-collar or white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Kearny is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Kearny who work in office and administrative support jobs (19.91%), sales jobs (9.74%), and management occupations (7.94%).

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

The town is also nautical, which means that parts of Kearny 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.

In Kearny, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 30.56 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average. One bright side is that local public transit is widely used, so it may be an option to avoid the headache of driving in the heavy traffic by leaving the car at home and taking transit.

Like elsewhere in America, most people in Kearny use a private automobile to get to work. But notably, a substantial number of Kearny's citizens do make use of public transit in their daily commute, primarily riding the bus. This helps more people get to work with less air pollution, and require fewer highways to get them there.

Kearny Information and Demographics

The citizens of Kearny are slightly better educated than the national average of 14.96% for all cities and towns, with 17.37% of adults in Kearny having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.

The per capita income in Kearny in 2000 was $20,886, which is lower middle income relative to New Jersey, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $83,544 for a family of four.

Kearny is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Kearny home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Kearny is White, followed by Asian. Kearny also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 27.31% of the town's residents. Important ancestries of people in Kearny include Portuguese, Italian, Irish, Polish, Brazilian, German, and Scottish.

In addition, Kearny has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (38.20%).

The languages spoken by people in Kearny are also diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in Kearny is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Chinese.