Rye is a somewhat small coastal city (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of New York. With a population of 14,955 people and three constituent neighborhoods, Rye is the 139th largest community in New York. Rye has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.

Rye is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 94.99% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Rye is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Rye who work in management occupations (19.64%), sales jobs (19.31%), and office and administrative support jobs (10.51%).

Of important note, Rye is also a city of artists. Rye has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Rye's character.

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

In addition, Rye 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.

Because of many things, Rye is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Rye really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Rye perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic night life, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.

The city is also nautical, which means that parts of Rye are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and tidal rivers. Quite often, nautical areas such as these attract visitors and locals who come to enjoy the scenery and various waterfront activities.

In Rye, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 34.21 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.

Despite being a small city, Rye has a lot of people using the train to get to and from work every day. Most of these people on the train are using it to get to good jobs in other cities.

Rye Information and Demographics

If knowledge is power, Rye is a pretty powerful place. 68.33% of the adults in Rye have earned a 4-year college degree, masters degree, MD, law degree, or even PhD. Compare that to the national average of 14.96% for all cities and towns.

The per capita income in Rye in 2000 was $76,566, which is wealthy relative to New York and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $306,264 for a family of four. However, Rye contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Rye home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Rye is White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Rye include Italian, Irish, English, German, French, and Russian.

Foreign born people are also an important part of Rye's cultural character, accounting for 21.49% of the city's population.

The languages spoken by people in Rye 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 Rye is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Japanese, and French.