This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Arnoldsburg is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 3,080 people and just one neighborhood, Arnoldsburg is the 65th largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Arnoldsburg, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 36.08% of Arnoldsburg’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Arnoldsburg is a town of sales and office workers, construction workers and builders, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Arnoldsburg who work in office and administrative support (13.80%), sales jobs (12.97%), and management occupations (6.96%).
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Arnoldsburg has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Arnoldsburg has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Arnoldsburg than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Arnoldsburg may be for you.
In Arnoldsburg, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 40.76 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, Arnoldsburg doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The citizens of Arnoldsburg have a very low rate of college education: just 9.41% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, compared to a national average of 21.84% for all cities.
The per capita income in Arnoldsburg in 2022 was $25,669, which is middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $102,676 for a family of four. However, Arnoldsburg contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Arnoldsburg also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 32.38% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Arnoldsburg home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Arnoldsburg residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Arnoldsburg include Irish, English, German, French, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Arnoldsburg is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Modes of Transportation
Our research reveals that 95.2% of commuters who live in the neighborhood get to work each day by driving alone in their automobiles, which is a higher proportion than 99.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Length of Commute
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 19.7% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.5% of all neighborhoods in America.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.0% of all neighborhoods in America, with 32.4% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
In addition, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 30.5% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.3% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
Furthermore, this neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 20 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 94.7% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 8.0% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Arnoldsburg are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 91.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 49.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 93.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 36.1% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 23.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (21.5%), and 19.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.2% of households. Some people also speak Italian (4.1%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Arnoldsburg, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (16.2%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (15.9%), and residents who report German roots (10.5%), and some of the residents are also of French ancestry (8.0%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (3.2%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (27.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (95.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
