Waterville is a very small town located in the state of Washington. With a population of 1,125 people and just one neighborhood, Waterville is the 259th largest community in Washington. Waterville has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Waterville is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 47.01% of the Waterville workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Waterville is a town of sales and office workers, construction workers and builders, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Waterville who work in sales jobs (14.43%), management occupations (8.68%), and office and administrative support (8.23%).
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 13.39% 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.
Because of many things, Waterville is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Waterville really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Waterville perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.
One downside of living in Waterville, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 30.27 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Waterville doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The percentage of people in Waterville with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 12.65% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Waterville in 2022 was $36,664, which is middle income relative to Washington, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $146,656 for a family of four. However, Waterville contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Waterville is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Waterville home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Waterville residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Waterville also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 13.44% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Waterville include German, English, Norwegian, Irish, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Waterville is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
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.
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 3 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 98.9% of America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 98.5% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
If you're looking for a great spot to raise a family, then look no further than the neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that the combination of good quality public schools, above-average safety from crime, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family homes, help make this neighborhood among the top 13.4% of family-friendly neighborhoods across the state of Washington. In addition, there are a high proportion of other families with school-aged children living here, making it easy for parents and their children to socialize and develop a sense of community support. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools, in part due to the educational attainment of the parents here, who vote in support of the public schools. In addition to being an excellent choice for families with school-aged children, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for active retirees.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Norwegian and Danish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 9.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Norwegian ancestry and 2.2% have Danish ancestry.
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Waterville are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 49.2% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 2.4% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 73.8% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 32.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 30.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.6%), and 11.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 89.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Italian and Polish.
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 Waterville, WA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (23.9%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.7%), and residents who report Mexican roots (11.0%), and some of the residents are also of Norwegian ancestry (9.8%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (9.0%), among others.
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 between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.3% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (73.2%) 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 (9.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.