Working-age owners, with a sizeable minority renting. About six in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Four in ten hold a degree. Sutton is London's middle of the road, with a train to work and a semi to come back to.
About 61% of households own their home, according to the 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure here. About 26% rent privately and 12% rent from the council or a housing association. That private-rented quarter is concentrated in the flats near the station and the town centre, where a short commute matters more than a long lease.
The median age in Sutton is 38, and about 32% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is a town in the thick of mortgages, nurseries and school admissions. Retirees have a presence, though they are a smaller share here than in the leafier places to the south.
The Office for National Statistics models household income across Sutton at about £80,000 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged over the town's eleven neighbourhood areas, and about £53,000 after tax. That is two salaries' worth of comfortable on paper, and the tax and the mortgage between them take most of the shine off it.
The households are a broad mix. About 28% are one person living alone, and within that about 11% are pensioners living alone. Couples with dependent children make up about 25% of households, and lone parents about 12%. The town is busy with families without being dominated by them.
About 41% of adults hold a degree, about 15% have no formal qualifications and only 2% are full-time students. With no university in town, the students go elsewhere and the graduates come back once they need a garden. The adult learners have their own history here: Thomas Wall, whose name ended up on sausages and ice cream, built the adult school on Benhill Avenue in 1910 because he never had the education himself.
Health is good. About 86% of Sutton's residents described their health as good or very good in 2021. Across the London Borough of Sutton, preventable deaths run better than the England average, and smoking, at about 9% of adults, is similar to England. Those last two are borough figures, measured over a wider area than this town.
Only 212 people live in communal settings such as care homes, too few to shift any of the shares above.
Sutton's population is middling: comfortable, educated and mid-career, with nothing extreme in either direction. The people are as solid and unshowy as the semis they live in.