Gadsden, AL population, income and ZIP codes

Gadsden city is a small city in Alabama, with 33,617 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #16 of 593 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 39.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Gadsden city earn a median of $38,699 a year, 50.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 31% below the $55,687 median for the 322 Alabama cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 27.6% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Gadsden city is valued at $101,900, 66.4% below the national figure and 36% below the $158,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $787 a month, 44% below the national figure, or roughly $9,444 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 24.4% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 54.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.