Bloomington is also a major college town with a large number of people who are 18 years or older and attending college. As is often the case in college towns, the many students that live in Bloomington have a strong influence on the local culture and entertainment scene, which may seem dormant by comparison in the summer months when much of the student population is away. In the fall, the return of students has a reinvigorating effect on the community. Because colleges are lasting institutions, they have a stabilizing effect on the economy by providing direct local benefits such as jobs for faculty and staff and spending by students. Bloomington’s economy is one such example of this.
Not only is Bloomington a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a very large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. That’s because Bloomington is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Bloomington a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
Residents of the city have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 18.54 minutes getting to work every day.
Bloomington has a lot of people who ride the bus to and from work. In fact, for its size, Bloomington has quite a high level of public transit users. Bloomington’s need for inexpensive transportation options for its citizens is quite high.
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Bloomington, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Bloomington is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 59.82% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Bloomington in 2022 was $31,069, which is upper middle income relative to Indiana, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $124,276 for a family of four. However, Bloomington contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Bloomington also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 31.08% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Bloomington is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Bloomington home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Bloomington residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Bloomington include German, English, Irish, Polish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Bloomington is English. Other important languages spoken here include Chinese and Spanish.
