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.
West Union is a tiny town located in the state of South Carolina. With a population of 381 people and just one neighborhood, West Union is the 243rd largest community in South Carolina.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, West Union is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 50.31% of the West Union workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, West Union is a town of production and manufacturing workers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in West Union who work in office and administrative support (14.72%), healthcare (6.75%), and business and financial occupations (4.91%).
Of important note, West Union is also a town of artists. West Union has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape West Union’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, West Union is worth considering.
Residents of the town have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 18.31 minutes getting to work every day.
As is often the case in a small town, West Union doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
In terms of college education, the citizens of West Union rank slightly lower than the national average. 16.47% of adults 25 and older in West Union have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, while 21.84% of adults have a 4-year degree or higher in the average American community.
The per capita income in West Union in 2022 was $24,181, which is lower middle income relative to South Carolina, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $96,724 for a family of four. However, West Union contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
West Union is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call West Union home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of West Union residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. West Union also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 17.30% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in West Union include German, Irish, English, French, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in West Union is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish 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.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 95.4% of all neighborhoods in America, with 31.1% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more English and British ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 20.6% of this neighborhood's residents have English ancestry and 2.1% have British ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak French at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in West Union are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 42.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 16.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 63.1% 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, 42.5% 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 29.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (22.3%), and 5.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 91.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and French.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 West Union, SC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (20.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (12.5%), and residents who report German roots (11.8%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (5.9%), along with some French ancestry residents (3.7%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (42.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (79.1%) 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.
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.
