Lawton is a larger medium-sized city located in the state of Oklahoma. With a population of 90,381 people and 32 constituent neighborhoods, Lawton is the sixth largest community in Oklahoma.
The armed forces are a huge part of the life in Lawton, employing 12.07% of the workforce. While it is a military town, the civilian sector still plays an important role in the local economy, where the Healthcare and Retail industries employ 15.53% and 12.17% of the civilian workforce, respectively.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 12.56% 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.
Another interesting thing about Lawton, despite not being a huge city, is that there is a relatively high proportion of people living here who are young, single, and upwardly-mobile professionals. This makes it a good choice for other relocating single professionals. Here, these young singles will find many others like themselves, with opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Lawton spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 17.48 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.
The population of Lawton overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Lawton, 22.12% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Lawton in 2018 was $25,374, which is upper middle income relative to Oklahoma, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $101,496 for a family of four. However, Lawton contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Lawton is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Lawton home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lawton residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Lawton also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 15.03% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Lawton include German, Irish, English, Italian, and French.
The most common language spoken in Lawton is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.