East Brookfield is a very small town located in the state of Massachusetts. With a population of 2,204 people and just one neighborhood, East Brookfield is the 298th largest community in Massachusetts. East Brookfield has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
East Brookfield is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, East Brookfield is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in East Brookfield who work in sales jobs (12.71%), healthcare (11.79%), and office and administrative support (11.60%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 9.56% 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.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) East Brookfield has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. East Brookfield has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in East Brookfield than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, East Brookfield may be for you.
One downside of living in East Brookfield is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In East Brookfield, the average commute to work is 36.31 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, East Brookfield doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The percentage of people in East Brookfield who are college-educated is somewhat higher than the average US community of 21.84%: 26.03% of adults in East Brookfield have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in East Brookfield in 2022 was $41,738, which is low income relative to Massachusetts, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $166,952 for a family of four.
The people who call East Brookfield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of East Brookfield residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in East Brookfield include French, Irish, English, Italian, and German.
The most common language spoken in East Brookfield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Portuguese.
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in East Brookfield, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French and French Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 14.0% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry and 4.7% have French Canadian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Portuguese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 East Brookfield are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 56.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 11.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.3% 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, 42.0% 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 27.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (15.5%), and 14.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 94.5% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Portuguese.
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 East Brookfield, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as French (14.0%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (13.1%), and residents who report English roots (10.4%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (7.0%), along with some German ancestry residents (6.9%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (37.7% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (86.1%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.