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.
Pine Grove is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 344 people and just one neighborhood, Pine Grove is the 223rd largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Pine Grove is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 41.90% of the Pine Grove workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Pine Grove is a town of sales and office workers, construction workers and builders, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Pine Grove who work in sales jobs (25.71%), food service (10.48%), and management occupations (6.67%).
Setting & Lifestyle
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Pine Grove has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Pine Grove a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Pine Grove, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 41.67 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Pine Grove doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Pine Grove has a very low overall level of education: only 9.35% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in Pine Grove in 2022 was $23,277, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $93,108 for a family of four. However, Pine Grove contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Pine Grove also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 35.42% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Pine Grove home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Pine Grove residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Pine Grove include German, Polish, Irish, English, and European.
The most common language spoken in Pine Grove is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and African languages.
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.
Length of Commute
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 15.3% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.7% of all neighborhoods in America.
People
The neighborhood is unique for having just 5.7% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 96.8% of America's neighborhoods.
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 18 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 95.2% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Hungarian and Polish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Hungarian ancestry and 10.7% have Polish ancestry.
The Neighbors
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 Pine Grove are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 81.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 35.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 86.4% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 33.9% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 27.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (21.0%), and 17.6% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.9% of households.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Pine Grove, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (16.7%), and residents who report Polish roots (10.7%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (8.1%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (5.4%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (42.6% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (82.4%) 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 (13.0%) . 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.
