Ruby, AK population, income and ZIP codes

Ruby city is a very small community in Alaska, with 180 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #196 of 355 ranked by population — larger than 44% of them. The median age here is 52 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Ruby city earn a median of $35,208 a year, 55.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 57% below the $81,250 median for the 73 Alaska cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 23.3% 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 Ruby city is valued at $72,900, 76% below the national figure and 76% below the $305,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 84.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

A median age of 52 puts Ruby city well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages. With 180 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Ruby city against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Ruby city because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.