One thing noticeable about Mount Vernon, although not a huge city, is that it has a large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile career starters. That’s because Mount Vernon is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Mount Vernon a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
One downside of living in Mount Vernon is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Mount Vernon, the average commute to work is 34.83 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average. On the other hand, local public transit is widely used in the city, so leaving the car at home and taking transit is often a viable alternative. In addition, it is also a pedestrian-friendly city. Many of Mount Vernon’s neighborhoods are dense enough and have amenities close enough together that people find it feasible to get around on foot.
Although the majority of commuting trips in the city are by private automobile, Mount Vernon is somewhat unusual for a city of its size for having a substantial number of people who use public transportation. For a lot of people, the subway helps to get to and from their jobs every morning, which benefits everyone in the Mount Vernon area by reducing both traffic and air pollution.
The education level of Mount Vernon citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (21.84%): 34.15% of adults in Mount Vernon have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Mount Vernon in 2022 was $40,288, which is middle income relative to New York, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $161,152 for a family of four. However, Mount Vernon contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Mount Vernon is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Mount Vernon home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Mount Vernon residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Mount Vernon also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 17.22% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Mount Vernon include Jamaican, Italian, Irish, African, and Portuguese.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Mount Vernon's cultural character, accounting for 32.49% of the city’s population.
The most common language spoken in Mount Vernon is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Portuguese.
