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.
Bessemer is a very small city located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,779 people and just one neighborhood, Bessemer is the 374th largest community in Michigan. Bessemer has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities.
Occupations and Workforce
Bessemer is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 85.65% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Bessemer is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Bessemer who work in sales jobs (14.14%), office and administrative support (13.50%), and business and financial occupations (12.87%).
A relatively large number of people in Bessemer telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 13.92% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. 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.
Setting & Lifestyle
Residents will find that the city 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, Bessemer is worth considering.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Bessemer spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 16.33 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.
Demographics
The education level of Bessemer citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 19.86% of adults 25 and older in Bessemer have a college degree.
The per capita income in Bessemer in 2022 was $28,189, which is lower middle income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $112,756 for a family of four. However, Bessemer contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Bessemer home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Bessemer residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in Bessemer include Finnish, English, Italian, German, and Swedish.
The most common language spoken in Bessemer is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Native American languages.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Real Estate
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 30.8% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.4% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
People
There is an especially high percentage of incarcerated people (0.8%) living in the neighborhood.
In addition, the neighborhood stands out within Michigan for its college student friendly environment. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood is home to a number of college students, is relatively walkable, and above average in safety. In combination, this makes it stand out for a good place for college students to consider. Because a number of college students live here, this neighborhood may be close to a college campus and offer certain amenities nearby geared towards the student body. While it's not an environment for everyone, ambitious scholars can enjoy seasonal excitement between semesters and school breaks, and parents can rest easy knowing that the area has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 7.8% of college-friendly places to live in MI.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Finnish and Czechoslovakian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 25.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Finnish ancestry and 2.8% have Czechoslovakian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 10.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.4% 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 Bessemer are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 81.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 14.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 31.8% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 28.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (21.6%), and 17.0% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.7% of households. Some people also speak Polish (10.8%).
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 Bessemer, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Finnish (25.6%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (17.0%), and residents who report Italian roots (11.7%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (10.8%), along with some Swedish ancestry residents (6.3%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (56.4% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (78.1%) 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 (6.2%) . 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.
