Columbia is a relatively large city located in the state of South Carolina. With a population of 142,416 people and 85 associated neighborhoods, Columbia is the second largest community in South Carolina.

7.47% of the workforce is employed in the armed forces, making the military a huge focus of life in Columbia. Even though it is a military town, the civilian sector still plays an important role in the local economy. The Education and Healthcare industries respectively employ 14.07% and 12.97% of the civilian workforce.

Also of interest is that Columbia has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 9.82% 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.

Combining city textures and college town sensibilities, Columbia really has a nice blend of characteristics. While not a huge city, Columbia is big enough to offer a healthy dose of diversion, opportunity, and amenity to its residents and to the thousands of college students who descend on it every fall. Its size and diversity makes Columbia more than just a college town, but removing the students from the equation would undeniably change Columbia’s character and quality of life.

Not only is Columbia a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a very large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. That’s because Columbia 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 Columbia 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.

Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Columbia spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 18.96 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.

The citizens of Columbia are among the most well-educated in the nation: 46.13% of adults in Columbia have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree, whereas the average US city has 21.84% holding at least a bachelor's degree.

The per capita income in Columbia in 2022 was $38,087, which is upper middle income relative to South Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $152,348 for a family of four. However, Columbia contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Columbia is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Columbia home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Columbia residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Columbia include German, English, Irish, Italian, and Scots-Irish.

The most common language spoken in Columbia is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Langs. of India.