By Stephen Smoot
Over the past month, the United States Census Bureau has released updated local, county, and state profiles as well as the 2023 numbers from their County Business Patterns data sets. The profiles reveal how Shinnston and other communities compare to Harrison County and West Virginia as a whole.
It’s important to remember when reviewing these numbers that the US Census Bureau uses median numbers for many of its statistics. The median represents the middle point number, not an average of all numbers. Sources for the data came from 2023 surveys and the 2020 Census.
What the Census Bureau regards as the “Northern District” of Harrison County starts at Lumberport and includes communities to the north, west, and east, extending to the boundary lines. Shinnston, Enterprise, Wyatt, and a number of other communities are within this area.
Just under 10,000 live in this area. The median age of 43.1 exceeds that of the county itself by just a percentage point while that of the state itself is 42.8 and the nation as a whole 39.2. The Census Bureau counted 65,996 in Harrison County in 2020 and 1,793,716 in the state.
When looking at the visual representation of age distributions, Northern Harrison reveals an outlier statistic where the number of boys aged birth to four outnumbered every other category. The “Population Pyramid” breaks down age categories in periods of four years and also differentiates between males and females. That age and gender group showed 427 boys in the area under the age of five compared to 257 girls. The next highest category was 397 men between the ages of 60 and 64.
This dynamic did not appear at the county or the state level.
In both Northern Harrison and the county as a whole, about 20 percent of residents are 65 and older, with the state at 21 percent.
When it comes to the veteran population, Northern Harrison can boast a high percentage of men and women who served their country. Almost 8.5 percent of those counted reported veteran status, compared to 6.8 countywide and 7.2 percent across the state.
Northern Harrison boasts higher median incomes than both the rest of the county and the state. The Census Bureau reports that the local area offers a median of $59,734, compared to $58,646 in Harrison and $55,948 in West Virginia as a whole. Higher income levels have given the area a poverty level of 8.9 percent, five percentage points lower than the county and just over half the percentage of West Virginia’s rate of 16.7 percent.
Interestingly enough, the higher salaries in the local area correlate with a much lower percentage of individuals with college degrees. Approximately one in 10 people in Northern Harrison hold bachelors degrees, compared to a county level of just over 26 percent and just under 25 percent statewide. Northern Harrison, however, has a significantly higher percentage of children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, hitting a percentage of 82.2 percent, about seven points higher than Harrison County.
Statewide, seven in 10 are enrolled in public schools, but many of those not enrolled have alternative options for education.
In Harrison County as a whole, it should surprise no one that the federal agency heavy region would have over 23 percent of workers engaged in employment in some level of government, three percentage points higher than the state. A little over 16 percent of those in Northern Harrison, however, receive their paychecks from a government employer.
In Northern Harrison, nearly 70 percent work for a private company, and 7.2 percent each in non profits or some fashion of self-employment. In the county, those numbers are 61 percent in private, 7.4 in non profit, and 7.7 percent self-employed. Statewide numbers do not reflect a significant difference from Harrison County.
Northern Harrison also shows an employment rate of over 57 percent, much closer to the national percentage of 60.6 percent than Harrison County at 53.7 percent or West Virginia at 51.7.
Almost one in five of those workers in Northern Harrison work in education, health care, and social assistance while 12 percent work in retail and 11 percent in construction. Transportation, utilities, and warehousing, as well as public administration, and manufacturing, all hover around 10 percent. About six percent work in arts, entertainment, accommodation, and food services.
