Many residents of Northlake know the city is 3.2 square miles and has about 12,000 residents.
But many residents don’t know that if you live in Northlake, you’re more likely to speak Spanish, earn less, drive alone, make a mortgage payment and not be as educated as your counterparts in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Those conclusions are based on numbers from Census Reporter a website funded by the Knight Foundation. Census Reporter, in turn, got its numbers from the 2013 American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census on a rolling basis. Unlike the 10-year census, which tries to contact everyone, the American Community Survey only contacts a percentage of the population and then projects numbers. The numbers below have a 10 percent margin of error.
Residents of Northlake on average earn $20,149. That’s about two-thirds of the average earnings in the Chicago area, which is $31,146. Households do a bit better with a median of $53,972, about 90 percent of the metropolitan average of $61,156.
About 11.2 percent of the population in Northlake is below the poverty line. That’s better than the regional average of 13.8 percent of residents.
The median age in Northlake is 36.1 years old. That’s consistent with the region.
The Hispanic population of Northlake has increased over the years. As of 2013, about 53 percent of city residents are of Hispanic background. That’s quite a bit higher than the Chicago metropolitan region (21 percent) and much higher than the state average (16 percent).
In a related statistic, 55.4 percent of people speak a language other than English at home, which is almost double the regional average of 28.7 percent. That language is most often Spanish.
A bit less than a third — 29.9 percent — of Northlake residents were born outside the United States, compared to 17.6 percent average in the region overall. Of that group, 79 percent were born in Latin America and 14 percent in Europe.
On average, Northlake residents drive 22.5 minutes to work. That’s better than the metropolitan average of 30.8 minutes. Most of the people (77 percent), however, drove alone, which is a bit worse than the regional average of 71 percent.
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Northlake households are a bit more crowded, with an average of 3.3 people compared to the metropolitan region, which has an average of 2.7 people.
Northlake residents are more likely to be homeowners with 72 percent of households owning a home. That’s 10 percent higher than the metropolitan average. Their houses tend to be less valuable then homes in the region with a median price of $173,100 — about three-fourths of the average in the region. The remaining 28 percent are renters, which is 80 percent of the regional average.
Northlake residents aren’t as educated as their regional counterparts. On average 70.6 percent graduate high school or attend some college — compared to 86.7 percent regionally — and 10.5 percent earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, which is about one-third of the regional average of 34.6 percent.
Of the more than 12,000 residents, an estimated 371 served in the military. That is 4.1 percent of the population.