It takes about 24 minutes on average for a Pittsburgher to get to work.
Journalists stumble upon random facts like this all the time about the places they cover. One of our reporters was trying to find the number of people living in Pennsylvania over age 65 (it’s 2.1 million), and we started chatting in the newsroom about some other interesting facts we found in Census data about Pittsburgh from the most recent American Community Survey in 2014.
Now we’re going to share some of it with you. The following data is from CensusReporter.org.
Pittsburgh’s population = 305,434
Pittsburgh metropolitan area = 2,355,968
(This is what Census Reporter considered the Pittsburgh metro area. And the * indicates the data’s margin of error is at least 10 percent of the total value.)
Education
90.9%* are high school graduates or higher, which is around the same rate for both the Pittsburgh metro area and Pennsylvania.
38.4%* of Pittsburghers have a bachelor degree or higher, which is about 20 percent higher than the rate in the Pittsburgh metro area (31.7%) and 1.3 times the rate in Pennsylvania (29%*).
Language
10%* of Pittsburgh residents speak languages other than English at home. That is double the rate in the Pittsburgh metro area (5.1%*) and a little less than rate in Pennsylvania (10.5%*).
Place of birth
7.6%* of the city’s population are foreign-born and that’s more than double the rate in the Pittsburgh metro area (3.6%*) and about 20 percent higher than the rate in Pennsylvania (6.4%*).
Age
The median age in Pittsburgh is 33*, compared to age 43* in the Pittsburgh metro area and age 41* in Pennsylvania.
Race and gender
Pittsburgh is 51% female* and 49% male*, which is about the same for both the Pittsburgh metro area and Pennsyvlania overall. Also, Pittsburgh is very white.
Income
The per capita income in Pittsburgh is $27,367*, which is a little less than the amount in Pennsylvania ($29,220*).
The median household income is $41,074*, which is about three-quarters of the amount in Pennsylvania ($53,234*).
Poverty
23.9%* of Pittsburghers live below the poverty line, which is nearly double the rate in the Pittsburgh metro area (12.5%*) and more than 1.5 times the rate in Pennsylvania (13.6%*).
Transportation to work
Housing
The median value of owner-occupied housing units was $97,900*, which is about three-quarters of the amount in the Pittsburgh metro area ($134,700*) and about three-fifths of the amount in Pennsylvania ($165,400*).
