Clay Center is a very small city located in the state of Kansas. With a population of 4,123 people and just one neighborhood, Clay Center is the 82nd largest community in Kansas. Clay Center has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities.
Clay Center is a blue-collar town, with 37.14% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Clay Center is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Clay Center who work in office and administrative support (10.54%), sales jobs (8.24%), and healthcare (6.71%).
One of the benefits of Clay Center is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 16.66 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
As is often the case in a small city, Clay Center doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The education level of Clay Center citizens is a little higher than the average for US cities and towns: 24.25% of adults in Clay Center have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Clay Center in 2022 was $28,465, which is lower middle income relative to Kansas and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $113,860 for a family of four. However, Clay Center contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Clay Center home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Clay Center residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Clay Center include German, English, Irish, Swedish, and French.
The most common language spoken in Clay Center is English. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Polish.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. Residents of the neighborhood have the pleasure of having one of the shortest commutes to work of any neighborhood in America. 68.9% of the residents have a commute time from home to work (one way) of less than fifteen minutes. This is a higher proportion of residents enjoying a short trip to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. Less time commuting means more time for other things in life.
There is an especially high percentage of incarcerated people (1.5%) living in the neighborhood.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Czechoslovakian and Swedish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 0.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Czechoslovakian ancestry and 6.1% have Swedish ancestry.
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 Clay Center are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 71.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 34.9% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 34.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.2%), and 12.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.7% of households.
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Clay Center, KS, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (24.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (16.0%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.6%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (6.1%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (3.2%), among others.
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (68.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (84.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (9.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.