In addition, New Brunswick is a major college town that has a very high percentage of its residents over 18 years old who are college students. Naturally, collegiate life has a major influence on local New Brunswick culture, lifestyle and entertainment options. New Brunswick really pulses to the beat of the academic calendar. In New Brunswick every fall, returning students reinvigorate the community, who you will notice are all over town, buying groceries, out with friends, and getting acquainted or re-acquainted with each other and New Brunswick. One of the beneficial effects that colleges provide is that they tend to be lasting institutions that deliver direct economic benefits to the local economy in the form of such things as jobs for faculty and staff, and spending by students. New Brunswick benefits directly from this.
Not only is New Brunswick 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 New Brunswick 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 New Brunswick 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.
A lot of people in New Brunswick take the bus for their daily commute. For the size of the city, the number of people who use public transportation is quite high. For many people in New Brunswick, this fills their need for low-cost transportation.
The citizens of New Brunswick are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 24.33% of adults in New Brunswick having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in New Brunswick in 2022 was $24,057, which is low income relative to New Jersey and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $96,228 for a family of four. However, New Brunswick contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. New Brunswick also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 31.88% of its population below the federal poverty line.
New Brunswick is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call New Brunswick home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in New Brunswick, accounting for 46.88% of the city’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of New Brunswick residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in New Brunswick include Italian, Irish, German, Polish, and Guyanese.
Foreign born people are also an important part of New Brunswick's cultural character, accounting for 33.77% of the city’s population.
The most common language spoken in New Brunswick is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.
