Champaign is a nice balance between life in a moderately big city and the interesting diversions and culture that come from having a big college student population. The thousands of students who arrive on campus every fall will find that Champaign has plenty of amenities and opportunities for them, while residents of Champaign enjoy the lectures, music, art, and economic trickle-down that colleges typically provide. "Town and Gown" complement each other in Champaign.
Not only is Champaign 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 Champaign 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 Champaign 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.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Champaign spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 16.66 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.
Many people in Champaign take advantage of public transportation to get around. In fact, for the size of the city, the number of people who use the bus to commute to work is quite high. This helps to fill a need among Champaign citizens for affordable transportation.
If knowledge is power, Champaign is a pretty powerful place. 53.61% of the adults in Champaign have earned a 4-year college degree, masters degree, MD, law degree, or even PhD. Compare that to the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns.
The per capita income in Champaign in 2022 was $35,886, which is middle income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $143,544 for a family of four. However, Champaign contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Champaign is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Champaign home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Champaign residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Champaign include German, Irish, English, Polish, and Italian.
In addition, Champaign has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (16.95%).
The most common language spoken in Champaign is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.
