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.
St. James is a tiny town located in the state of Louisiana. With a population of 592 people and just one neighborhood, St. James is the 276th largest community in Louisiana.
Occupations and Workforce
St. James is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 89.58% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, St. James is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in St. James who work in office and administrative support (31.77%), computer science and math (13.02%), and healthcare (9.38%).
Also of interest is that St. James has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 7.29% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
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!) St. James 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. St. James has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in St. James than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, St. James may be for you.
Being a small town, St. James does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The education level of St. James citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 19.28% of adults 25 and older in St. James have a college degree.
The per capita income in St. James in 2022 was $25,961, which is middle income relative to Louisiana, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $103,844 for a family of four. However, St. James contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
St. James is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call St. James home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of St. James residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in St. James include German, Italian, French, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
The most common language spoken in St. James is English. Other important languages spoken here include French Creole and African languages.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
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.
People
Single parenting is hard. But you don't have to tell the neighborhood about it; they already know. 25.0% of this neighborhood's households are run by single mothers, which is a higher concentration than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.8% of American neighborhoods. Further NeighborhoodScout research showed strong statistical correlations among high rates of children living in single parent households, and neighborhood crime, particularly violent crime, neighborhood poverty, and, importantly, the percentage of low weight births and rates of infant mortality.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.2% of all neighborhoods in America, with 33.3% 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, unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 94.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (22.4%) than in 95.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more African ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 7.4% of this neighborhood's residents have African 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 St. James are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 93.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 47.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 93.3% 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, 36.8% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional 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 33.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.4%), and 11.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.7% of households.
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 St. James, LA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Sub-Saharan African (7.4%). There are also a number of people of African ancestry (7.4%), and residents who report German roots (2.7%), and some of the residents are also of French ancestry (1.5%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (1.3%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (46.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (72.1%) 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 (22.4%) . 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.
