Poughkeepsie is a medium-sized city located in the state of New York. With a population of 29,871 people and 18 constituent neighborhoods, Poughkeepsie is the 45th largest community in New York. Much of the housing stock in Poughkeepsie was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.

Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Poughkeepsie is neither predominently one or the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Poughkeepsie is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Poughkeepsie who work in office and administrative support jobs (13.75%), sales jobs (9.93%), and food service (9.30%).

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

For the size of the city, public transportation in Poughkeepsie is quite heavily used. Mostly, people who use it for their daily commute are taking the bus. For Poughkeepsie, the benefits are reduced air pollution and congestion on the highways.

Poughkeepsie Information and Demographics

The percentage of people in Poughkeepsie who are college-educated is somewhat higher than the average US community of 14.96%: 19.46% of adults in Poughkeepsie have at least a bachelor's degree.

The per capita income in Poughkeepsie in 2000 was $16,759, which is lower middle income relative to New York, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $67,036 for a family of four.

Poughkeepsie is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Poughkeepsie home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Poughkeepsie is White, followed by African-American. Poughkeepsie also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 10.50% of the city's residents. Important ancestries of people in Poughkeepsie include Italian, Irish, German, Jamaican, English, and Polish.

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