Surprise is a larger medium-sized city located in the state of Arizona. With a population of 154,198 people and 28 associated neighborhoods, Surprise is the tenth largest community in Arizona. There's nothing like the smell of a brand new house, and in Surprise, you'll find that a large proportion of houses were recently built. New growth in residential real estate is an indication that people are choosing to move to Surprise, and putting down their money on brand new construction. Surprise’s real estate is, on average, some of the newest in the nation. Surprise does seem to be experiencing an influx of affluent people, because the median household income is $87,756.00. Surprise real estate is some of the most expensive in Arizona, although Surprise house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.Unlike some cities, Surprise isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Surprise are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Surprise is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Surprise who work in sales jobs (14.44%), office and administrative support (13.23%), and management occupations (11.81%). Also of interest is that Surprise has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US. One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 14.78% 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 Surprise is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Surprise, the average commute to work is 30.80 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average. The overall education level of Surprise citizens is substantially higher than the typical US community, as 30.99% of adults in Surprise have at least a bachelor's degree, and the average American community has 21.84%. The per capita income in Surprise in 2022 was $37,518, which is upper middle income relative to Arizona and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $150,072 for a family of four. However, Surprise contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Surprise is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Surprise home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Surprise residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Surprise also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 20.91% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Surprise include German, English, Irish, Italian, and Polish. The most common language spoken in Surprise is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Tagalog.
