Wind Ridge is a tiny town located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 204 people and just one neighborhood, Wind Ridge is the 1088th largest community in Pennsylvania. Wind Ridge has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Wind Ridge is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 51.35% of the Wind Ridge workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Wind Ridge is a town of construction workers and builders, transportation and shipping workers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Wind Ridge who work in office and administrative support (13.51%), management occupations (10.81%), and sales jobs (5.41%).
It is a fairly quiet town 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!) Wind Ridge 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. Wind Ridge has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Wind Ridge than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Wind Ridge may be for you.
One downside of living in Wind Ridge is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Wind Ridge, the average commute to work is 37.03 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average. On the other hand, local public transit is widely used in the town, so leaving the car at home and taking transit is often a viable alternative.
For a small town, Wind Ridge has a lot of people who use public transit to get to work, and those that do mostly ride the subway. This suggests that a real need for low-cost transportation in Wind Ridge exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
The rate of college-level education in Wind Ridge is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.78% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Wind Ridge in 2022 was $29,368, which is lower middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $117,472 for a family of four. However, Wind Ridge contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Wind Ridge home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Wind Ridge residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Wind Ridge include Irish, Italian, English, German, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Wind Ridge is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and African languages.
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.
More people work in manufacturing and as laborers here in the neighborhood than in 98.6% of the neighborhoods in America. Despite the loss of manufacturing jobs across the nation, this neighborhood remains a place where, compared to other parts of the country, you will find many laborers and manufacturers.
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. 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. 10.5% 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 96.1% of all neighborhoods in America.
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 17 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 95.4% of America.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 6.5% 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 95.3% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Wind Ridge are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 64.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 4.8% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 64.8% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 48.4% 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 26.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (15.2%), and 9.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.7% of households. Some people also speak Italian (6.5%).
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 Wind Ridge, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (22.3%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (14.9%), and residents who report English roots (11.8%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (5.9%), along with some Scots-Irish ancestry residents (3.2%), among others.
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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (25.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans. However, there is also a significant group of residents (10.5%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (76.1%) 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 (18.0%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.