Columbia is a relatively large city located in the state of South Carolina. With a population of 142,416 people and 85 associated neighborhoods, Columbia is the second largest community in South Carolina.

Columbia is a military town: the armed forces employs 7.47% of the workforce, making the military a major focus of life in the city. In the civilian sector, Education and Healthcare are important in the local economy and are the city’s largest civilian employers, employing 14.07% and 12.97% of the civilian workforce respectively.

Also of interest is that Columbia has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 9.82% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.

Combining city textures and college town sensibilities, Columbia really has a nice blend of characteristics. While not a huge city, Columbia is big enough to offer a healthy dose of diversion, opportunity, and amenity to its residents and to the thousands of college students who descend on it every fall. Its size and diversity makes Columbia more than just a college town, but removing the students from the equation would undeniably change Columbia’s character and quality of life.

Not only is Columbia a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, creating a decent-sized population of people who are young, single, educated, and upwardly-mobile. This makes it a good choice for other relocating single professionals. Here, these young singles will find many others like themselves, with opportunities for friendships, socializing, romance, and fun.

Residents of the city have the good fortune of having one of the shortest daily commutes compared to the rest of the country. On average, they spend only 18.96 minutes getting to work every day.

Columbia is one of the most well-educated cities in the nation. 46.13% of adults in Columbia have at least a bachelor's degree. Compare that to the average community in America, which has just 21.84% with a bachelor's degree or higher.

The per capita income in Columbia in 2022 was $38,087, which is upper middle income relative to South Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $152,348 for a family of four. However, Columbia contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Columbia is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Columbia home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Columbia residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Columbia include German, English, Irish, Italian, and Scots-Irish.

The most common language spoken in Columbia is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Langs. of India.