Combining city textures and college town sensibilities, Providence really has a nice blend of characteristics. While not a huge city, Providence is big enough to offer a healthy dose of diversion, opportunity, and amenity to its residents and to the thousands of college students who descend on it every fall. Its size and diversity makes Providence more than just a college town, but removing the students from the equation would undeniably change Providence’s character and quality of life.
Not only is Providence a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a very large population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. That’s because Providence is full of single people in their 20s and 30s and who have undergraduate or graduate degrees and are starting careers in professional occupations. This makes Providence a pretty good place for young, educated career starters looking to find many people like themselves, with good opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.
One of the nice things about Providence is that it is nautical, which means that parts of it are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and bays. Because of this, visitors and locals will often go to these areas to take in the scenery or to enjoy waterfront activities.
Although the majority of commuting trips in the city are by private automobile, Providence is somewhat unusual for a city of its size for having a substantial number of people who use public transportation. For a lot of people, the bus helps to get to and from their jobs every morning, which benefits everyone in the Providence area by reducing both traffic and air pollution.
The population of Providence is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 34.69% of adults in Providence have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Providence in 2022 was $36,694, which is low income relative to Rhode Island, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $146,776 for a family of four. However, Providence contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Providence is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Providence home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Providence, accounting for 44.27% of the city’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Providence residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Providence include Irish, Italian, English, German, and French.
In addition, Providence has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (32.81%).
The most common language spoken in Providence is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and French.
