Clay is a somewhat small city located in the state of Alabama. With a population of 10,290 people and two associated neighborhoods, Clay is the 65th largest community in Alabama.Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Clay is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Clay is a city of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Clay who work in office and administrative support (10.51%), food service (9.77%), and teaching (9.71%). One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 7.88% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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. One downside of living in Clay is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Clay, the average commute to work is 32.09 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average. Being a small city, Clay does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.The percentage of adults in Clay who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 20.64% of the adults in Clay have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree. The per capita income in Clay in 2022 was $31,453, which is upper middle income relative to Alabama, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $125,812 for a family of four. However, Clay contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Clay is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Clay home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Clay residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Clay include English, African, Irish, German, and Italian. The most common language spoken in Clay is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Vietnamese.
