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Wakefield, MI

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Wakefield is a very small city located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,681 people and just one neighborhood, Wakefield is the 386th largest community in Michigan. Much of the housing stock in Wakefield was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.

Occupations and Workforce

Unlike some cities, Wakefield isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Wakefield are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Wakefield is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Wakefield who work in office and administrative support (15.99%), sales jobs (11.79%), and healthcare (9.76%).

Setting & Lifestyle

It is a fairly quiet city 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!) Wakefield 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. Wakefield has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Wakefield than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Wakefield may be for you.

As is often the case in a small city, Wakefield doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.

Demographics

In terms of college education, the citizens of Wakefield rank slightly lower than the national average. 15.20% of adults 25 and older in Wakefield have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, while 21.84% of adults have a 4-year degree or higher in the average American community.

The per capita income in Wakefield in 2022 was $28,602, which is lower middle income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $114,408 for a family of four. However, Wakefield contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Wakefield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Wakefield residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Wakefield include Finnish, Italian, German, Polish, and French.

The most common language spoken in Wakefield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

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.

Real Estate

Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 34.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 96.5% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.

In addition, 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 16 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 95.6% of America.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Finnish and Croatian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 19.0% of this neighborhood's residents have Finnish ancestry and 0.9% have Croatian ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 12.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.7% of the neighborhoods in America.

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 Wakefield are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 84.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 33.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 84.5% 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, 29.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 27.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.0%), and 17.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

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 95.3% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.

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 Wakefield, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Finnish (19.0%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (17.0%), and residents who report German roots (16.3%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (6.1%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (5.8%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.0% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (77.7%) 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 (14.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


Real Estate includes:
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Neighborhood Setting
Economics & Demographics include:
Lifestyle & Special Character
Household Types
Commute To Work
Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
Employment Industries & Occupations
Income & Unemployment Rate
Higher Education Attainment
Crime includes:
Neighborhood Crime Index
Crimes Per Square Mile
Property Crime Comparison
Violent Crime Comparison
Schools include:
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