Columbia is a somewhat small city located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 8,012 people and two constituent neighborhoods, Columbia is the 244th largest community in Illinois.

Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Columbia is neither predominently one or the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Columbia is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Columbia who work in office and administrative support jobs (16.95%), management occupations (10.95%), and sales jobs (9.35%).

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

Columbia 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 Columbia, which makes walking or biking to and from work a bit difficult. This makes for a very car-oriented town: 97.71% of residents commute to work by private automobile, and people often drive out of town for work, shopping, and other activities.

Columbia is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.

Columbia Information and Demographics

In terms of college education, Columbia is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 14.96% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 28.50% of adults in Columbia have a college degree.

The per capita income in Columbia in 2000 was $26,767, which is wealthy relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $107,068 for a family of four. However, Columbia contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

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

The most common language spoken in Columbia is English.