Worcester is a relatively large city located in the state of Massachusetts. With a population of 205,319 people and 46 associated neighborhoods, Worcester is the second largest community in Massachusetts. Worcester has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.
Also of interest is that Worcester 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 Worcester telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 9.92% 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.
Combining city textures and college town sensibilities, Worcester really has a nice blend of characteristics. While not a huge city, Worcester is big enough to offer a healthy dose of diversion, opportunity, and amenity to its residents and to the thousands of college students who descend on it every fall. Its size and diversity makes Worcester more than just a college town, but removing the students from the equation would undeniably change Worcester’s character and quality of life.
Not only is Worcester 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 Worcester 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 Worcester 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.
In terms of college education, Worcester is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 33.09% of adults in Worcester have a college degree.
The per capita income in Worcester in 2022 was $33,592, which is low income relative to Massachusetts, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $134,368 for a family of four. However, Worcester contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Worcester is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Worcester home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Worcester residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Worcester also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 24.59% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Worcester include Irish, Italian, French, English, and Polish.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Worcester's cultural character, accounting for 23.34% of the city’s population.
The most common language spoken in Worcester is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and African languages.