La Crosse is a larger medium-sized city located in the state of Wisconsin. With a population of 51,380 people and 18 associated neighborhoods, La Crosse is the 12th largest community in Wisconsin.La Crosse is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, La Crosse is a city of professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in La Crosse who work in office and administrative support (10.87%), food service (10.62%), and sales jobs (9.70%). Also of interest is that La Crosse has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US. Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 7.80% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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. In addition, La Crosse 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 La Crosse culture, lifestyle and entertainment options. La Crosse really pulses to the beat of the academic calendar. In La Crosse 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 La Crosse. 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. La Crosse benefits directly from this. Residents of the city have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 17.55 minutes getting to work every day.The citizens of La Crosse are very well educated compared to the average community in the nation: 35.15% of adults in La Crosse have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree. The per capita income in La Crosse in 2022 was $32,811, which is middle income relative to Wisconsin and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $131,244 for a family of four. However, La Crosse contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. The people who call La Crosse home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of La Crosse residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in La Crosse include German, Norwegian, Irish, English, and Polish. The most common language spoken in La Crosse is English. Other important languages spoken here include Miao/Hmong and Polish.
