Elizabeth, NJ

Elizabeth profile

Living in Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a larger medium-sized coastal city (i.e. on the ocean, a bay, or inlet) located in the state of New Jersey. With a population of 129,216 people and 26 constituent neighborhoods, Elizabeth is the fourth largest community in New Jersey.

Elizabeth is a blue-collar town, with 39.27% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Elizabeth is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Elizabeth who work in office and administrative support (11.92%), sales jobs (8.76%), and maintenance occupations (7.38%).


Like elsewhere in America, most people in Elizabeth use a private automobile to get to work. But notably, a substantial number of Elizabeth‘s citizens do make use of public transit in their daily commute, primarily riding taxis. This helps more people get to work with less air pollution, and require fewer highways to get them there.

The citizens of Elizabeth are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 13.50% of adults in Elizabeth have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree

The per capita income in Elizabeth in 2018 was $21,380, which is low income relative to New Jersey, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $85,520 for a family of four. However, Elizabeth contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Elizabeth is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Elizabeth home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Elizabeth, accounting for 65.01% of the city’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Elizabeth residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Elizabeth include Haitian, Portuguese, Italian, Brazilian, and Polish.

Foreign born people are also an important part of Elizabeth's cultural character, accounting for 46.62% of the city’s population.

The most common language spoken in Elizabeth is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Portuguese.