Spencer is a tiny village located in the state of New York. With a population of 705 people and just one neighborhood, Spencer is the 818th largest community in New York. Much of the housing stock in Spencer was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic villages in the country.
Unlike some villages, Spencer isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Spencer are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Spencer is a village of professionals, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Spencer who work in office and administrative support (17.07%), maintenance occupations (12.00%), and healthcare (6.13%).
A relatively large number of people in Spencer telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 7.73% 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.
As is often the case in a small village, Spencer doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The citizens of Spencer are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 22.99% of adults in Spencer having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Spencer in 2022 was $28,962, which is low income relative to New York, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $115,848 for a family of four. However, Spencer contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Spencer home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Spencer residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Spencer include English, German, Italian, Irish, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Spencer is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Finnish and Dutch ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Finnish ancestry and 4.5% have Dutch ancestry.
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 Spencer are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 44.0% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 58.1% 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, 34.3% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 23.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.9%), and 17.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.9% of households.
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 Spencer, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (16.4%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (15.6%), and residents who report Irish roots (9.9%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (7.2%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (4.5%), among others.
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 between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (50.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (86.7%) 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 (8.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.