Portales is also a college town, where lots of students live while attending area colleges. Because of the high percentage of people living in Portales enrolled in college, Portales has a number of services, amenities and opportunities geared towards the needs and activities of students.
One of the benefits of Portales is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 16.11 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
Being a small city, Portales does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The population of Portales overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Portales, 24.52% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Portales in 2018 was $22,236, which is lower middle income relative to New Mexico, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $88,944 for a family of four. However, Portales contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Portales is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Portales home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Portales residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Portales also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 44.32% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Portales include German, English, Irish, European, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Portales is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
