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.
Colon is a very small village located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,200 people and just one neighborhood, Colon is the 452nd largest community in Michigan. Much of the housing stock in Colon was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic villages in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Colon is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 38.72% of the Colon workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Colon is a village of sales and office workers, service providers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Colon who work in office and administrative support (15.49%), food service (9.60%), and sales jobs (7.91%).
Also of interest is that Colon has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
A relatively large number of people in Colon telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 12.50% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. 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
The village 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, Colon has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Colon a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
Colon is a small village, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The percentage of adults in Colon who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 17.56% of the adults in Colon have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Colon in 2022 was $26,518, which is lower middle income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $106,072 for a family of four. However, Colon contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Colon home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Colon residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Colon include German, European, Irish, English, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Colon 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
Would you like to be able to ride your bike to work? If you are attracted to the idea of getting a little exercise of the two-wheeled type while reducing your carbon footprint, bicycling to work might be the answer. But which neighborhood you live in can make this either impossible, or alternatively, a great and realistic option. NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed that the neighborhood is a fantastic option for bicycle commuters, as 14.2% of commuters here do ride their bikes to and from work on a daily basis. This is a higher amount than we found in 99.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
Also, in the neighborhood, carpooling is still a popular way to get to and from work. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that 24.2% of commuters carpool here, which is more than in 96.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Occupations
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research identifies the neighborhood as having one of the highest concentrations of people employed in manufacturing or as laborers of any neighborhood in America. In fact, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs nationally, this neighborhood has 54.1% of its working residents employed in such fields, which is a higher proportion than 99.5% of American neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. 33.8% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swiss and German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 13.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Swiss ancestry and 34.1% have German ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 26.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Colon are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 70.5% 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, 54.1% 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 16.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (15.4%), and 14.2% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 72.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Italian.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 Colon, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (34.1%). There are also a number of people of Swiss ancestry (13.3%), and residents who report English roots (7.5%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.6%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (3.3%), 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 (35.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (42.9%) 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 (24.2%) and 14.2% of residents also bicycle for their daily commute. 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.
