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Calais, ME

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Calais is a very small coastal city (i.e. on the ocean, a bay, or inlet) located in the state of Maine. With a population of 3,116 people and just one neighborhood, Calais is the 149th largest community in Maine. Calais has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities.

Occupations and Workforce

Calais is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 85.71% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Calais is a city of sales and office workers, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Calais who work in sales jobs (16.01%), management occupations (11.74%), and office and administrative support (9.50%).

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

Setting & Lifestyle

The city is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Calais has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Calais a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.

Calais is also nautical, which means that parts of it are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and bays. Such areas are often places that visitors and locals go for waterfront activities or taking in the scenery.

One of the benefits of Calais is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 17.35 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.

Being a small city, Calais does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.

Demographics

The citizens of Calais are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 21.20% of adults in Calais having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.

The per capita income in Calais in 2022 was $32,378, which is lower middle income relative to Maine, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $129,512 for a family of four. However, Calais contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Calais home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Calais residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Calais include English, Irish, German, French, and Scottish.

The most common language spoken in Calais 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.

Real Estate

is a neighborhood that is on the ocean, a bay, or inlet. Many times, such places have amenities that bring locals and visitors to the waterfront for recreational activities or to check out the scenery. In some densely populated areas that are less financially well-off, the neighborhood waterfront can be relatively industrial and less open to recreation. In addition to being coastal, is a very nautical neighborhood, meaning that it is somewhat historic, walkable, densely populated and on the water. This gives the neighborhood a very nautical feel, with some seaside and shipping feel, which some may really enjoy the sights and sounds of.

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. Residents of the neighborhood have the pleasure of having one of the shortest commutes to work of any neighborhood in America. 69.5% 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 98.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. Less time commuting means more time for other things in life.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Canadian and English ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Canadian ancestry and 26.0% have English 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 Calais are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 85.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 63.2% 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, 37.3% 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 32.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.1%), and 12.7% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.0% of households. Some people also speak Italian (3.7%).

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 Calais, ME, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (26.0%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (12.0%), and residents who report German roots (8.0%), and some of the residents are also of French ancestry (5.2%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (5.1%), among others.

Getting to Work

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 (69.5% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (85.4%) 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 (12.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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Economics & Demographics include:
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Commute To Work
Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
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Crime includes:
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Schools include:
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