Watford is home to working families in their thirties, most of them owners and a sizeable minority renting. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Nearly six in ten households own their home. About four in ten adults hold a degree. The town has been filling up with people from London since its factories boomed at the turn of the last century, and the habit has stuck.
The Census in 2021 is the source for every population figure here, and it counts about 135,600 people in 52,510 households across the area. About 57% of households own their home, around 24% rent privately and about 17% rent from a council or housing association. That is a lot of private landlords for a town where people mostly stay put.
The median age is 37, and about 32% of residents are between 25 and 44. That is the age band of first mortgages, nursery waiting lists and the morning commute, and it is the band Watford has the most of. Plenty of them work locally: the town is home to the head offices or British bases of companies such as Hilton, TK Maxx and Costco, so a decent share of the career years are spent ten minutes from home.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income at about £68,000 a year before tax, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods for the financial year to March 2023. Comfortable on paper, though a household on that figure still wants a second salary in the house to make a Watford semi work.
Households come in every shape. About 28% of homes have one person living alone, and about 10% are a pensioner living alone, part of that same group. Couples with dependent children make up about 24% of households, and lone parents about 12%. The family home and the single flat sit a few streets apart, sometimes in the same street.
Qualifications are spread across the range. About 40% of adults hold a degree or higher, about 16% have no formal qualifications at all, and full-time students make up only about 2% of residents. West Herts College has its Watford campus in town, but with no university of its own, Watford is a place where people arrive with their education already done.
The people of Watford are an ordinary mix by most measures: younger than the county average age suggests, comfortable before tax, and neither rich enough nor poor enough to stand out.