Poughkeepsie is a medium-sized city located in the state of New York. With a population of 32,010 people and 23 associated neighborhoods, Poughkeepsie is the 44th largest community in New York. Much of the housing stock in Poughkeepsie was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.Poughkeepsie is a decidedly white-collar city, with fully 87.16% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Poughkeepsie is a city of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Poughkeepsie who work in office and administrative support (10.92%), food service (9.16%), and sales jobs (8.87%). Also of interest is that Poughkeepsie has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US. Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 7.73% 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. A lot of people in Poughkeepsie take taxis for their daily commute. For the size of the city, the number of people who use public transportation is quite high. For many people in Poughkeepsie, this fills their need for low-cost transportation.The overall education level of Poughkeepsie citizens is substantially higher than the typical US community, as 32.72% of adults in Poughkeepsie have at least a bachelor's degree, and the average American community has 21.84%. The per capita income in Poughkeepsie in 2022 was $41,582, 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 $166,328 for a family of four. However, Poughkeepsie contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Poughkeepsie is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Poughkeepsie home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Poughkeepsie residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Poughkeepsie also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 21.19% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Poughkeepsie include Italian, Irish, German, Jamaican, and English. Foreign born people are also an important part of Poughkeepsie's cultural character, accounting for 15.78% of the city’s population. The most common language spoken in Poughkeepsie is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and African languages.
