This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Merrimac is a tiny village located in the state of Wisconsin. With a population of 526 people and just one neighborhood, Merrimac is the 450th largest community in Wisconsin. Merrimac has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic villages.
Occupations and Workforce
Merrimac is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Merrimac is a village of sales and office workers, managers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Merrimac who work in sales jobs (14.33%), management occupations (12.00%), and maintenance occupations (10.00%).
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet village because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Merrimac has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Merrimac has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Merrimac than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Merrimac may be for you.
One downside of living in Merrimac, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 33.12 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small village, Merrimac does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Merrimac who are college-educated is somewhat higher than the average US community of 21.84%: 26.56% of adults in Merrimac have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Merrimac in 2022 was $38,447, which is upper middle income relative to Wisconsin and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $153,788 for a family of four. However, Merrimac contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Merrimac is a somewhat ethnically-diverse village. The people who call Merrimac home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Merrimac residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Merrimac include German, Irish, English, Norwegian, and Swedish.
The most common language spoken in Merrimac is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Real Estate
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 40 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 90.9% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more German and Swiss ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 40.9% of this neighborhood's residents have German ancestry and 1.8% have Swiss ancestry.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Merrimac are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 58.4% of the neighborhoods in America. With 10.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 50.3% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 31.2% 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 28.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (25.9%), and 13.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 89.9% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (8.7%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 Merrimac, WI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (40.9%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (10.6%), and residents who report Mexican roots (10.3%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (6.7%), along with some Norwegian ancestry residents (6.3%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (30.3% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (79.3%) 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 (11.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
