Photo: Brian Stansberry · CC BY 4.0Household incomes in Prosperity trail those of 69% of U.S. towns
Prosperity grades C for jobs and income and D for walkability. Below the poverty line: 10.1% of residents, where South Carolina as a whole has 14.1%. Only 4% work in Prosperity; the top destination outside it is Newberry (14%, 6 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Getting to work from Prosperity, in brief
How the Jobs & income grade adds up in Prosperity
On income, poverty and job access, Prosperity is better than 34% of U.S. towns. The poverty rate holds Prosperity’s grade up; household income pulls it down ($62,958, U.S. $80,734).
Unemployment (4.0%) is left out: Prosperity’s labor force is under 1,000, too few workers for a steady figure.
A fairly firm grade. Within the Census margins of error for income and poverty, Prosperity could be anywhere from C− to B−.
Factories, building and farms: 41% of the jobs in Prosperity
544 jobs are based in Prosperity.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Prosperity, 2013 → 2023: 418 → 544. Big swings can come from how a large employer reports its locations, not only from real openings or closings.
Primary jobs covered by unemployment insurance (not the self-employed). Pay is monthly earnings. LEHD 2023.
Here is what they are, next to the jobs Prosperity’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Who commutes out of Prosperity, and who commutes in
On a workday 547 residents head out to work, 20 work right here, and 524 people come in from elsewhere.
About as many people by day as by night: the people who leave are replaced by the people who come in.
About as many jobs as working residents (0.96 per resident).
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
The towns that employ Prosperity’s residents
Where Prosperity clocks in
14% of workers
7% of workers
2% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Each way, about 22 minutes from Prosperity
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.1 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Prosperity workers work from home, vs 12% across South Carolina. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 536 commuters (the 4% who work from home are left out). Across South Carolina: 86% drive alone, <1% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
How far it is to work from Prosperity
About 19% show a job over 50 miles away. Some of that is real, and some is employers that report every worker at a head office, so a few long commutes are on paper only.
Straight-line distance from each worker’s home block to their main job’s block. LEHD 2023.
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
Most of Prosperity commutes by car
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Prosperity is more walkable than 12% of U.S. towns. The street layout scores higher than the way people actually get to work: hardly any commuters walk, bike or take transit, below the 2.4% across South Carolina.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 561 workers.
How TownRatings grades walkability →
Transit service: no data. EPA’s transit file has no stops for most of this county (its agencies had not published schedules in the format EPA used in 2020). That is missing data, not a finding that there is no bus or train.
Households without a car (shown, not graded). 11.0% of Prosperity households have no vehicle (South Carolina 5.7%, U.S. 8.4%). 0% of Prosperity’s commuters take a bus or train.
Prosperity next to U.S. towns of 900 to 1,700: 2,537th of 4,866 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somerset MD | 1,151 | $250K | 1.9% | 2.3% | <1% | A+ |
| 2 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Baxter Estates NY | 1,014 | $154K | 1.0% | 3.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 372 | Cane Savannah SC | 1,551 | $132K | 4.6% | 11.8% | 0% | A− |
| … | |||||||
| 714 | Shell Point SC | 1,439 | $82K | 3.1% | 6.4% | 1% | B+ |
| … | |||||||
| 1,070 | Elgin SC | 1,675 | $92K | 4.2% | 7.3% | 2% | B |
| … | |||||||
| 2,535 | Livonia LA | 1,134 | $73K | 20.1% | 1.6% | 3% | C |
| 2,536 | McComb OH | 1,549 | $64K | 9.8% | 2.7% | 7% | C |
| 2,537 | Prosperity SC | 1,259 | $63K | 10.1% | 4.0% | 4% | C |
| 2,538 | Auburn Township OH | 1,105 | $77K | 15.7% | 0.0% | 2% | C |
| 2,539 | Buffington Township PA | 1,218 | $66K | 9.6% | 14.9% | 2% | C |
| … | |||||||
| 4,866 | Oglala SD | 1,071 | $21K | 68.8% | 26.5% | 0% | D− |
Census ACS 2020–24 (income, poverty, unemployment), Census LEHD (work in town), TownRatings Jobs & income grades. Each town links to its Work & commute page.
Ranked on the Jobs & income grade: the towns either side of Prosperity, the top three, the last and three more from South Carolina.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Two sources, two years. Trips, distances and jobs based here: Census LEHD 2023, primary jobs, where the employer reports them. Income, poverty, unemployment, commute time and how people travel: Census ACS 2020–24 averages.
- Straight lines, older transit. Miles are as the crow flies. EPA’s walkability and transit files use 2017–20 inputs.
Jobs and commuting in Prosperity: questions
What is the median household income in Prosperity?
$62,958 (±$4,635) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $69,324 across South Carolina and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Prosperity?
10.1%, against 14.1% across South Carolina and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Prosperity?
22 minutes each way on average, against 26 across South Carolina and 26 nationally. 4% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Prosperity work?
4% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Newberry (14%, 6 mi), Columbia (7%, 38 mi), Greenville (2%, 64 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Prosperity walkable?
Prosperity is more walkable than 12% of U.S. towns (Walkability D): an EPA walkability index of 5.8 out of 20, and 0% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Prosperity without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 11% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Prosperity, from the people who make the trip.
More of Prosperity
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, primary jobs. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Distances are straight lines between home and work; real drives run longer. Walkability index, job access and transit service: U.S. EPA Smart Location Database. The two grades are our own summaries of these figures, not official ratings.