Wales, AK population, income and ZIP codes

Wales city is a very small community in Alaska, with 286 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #163 of 355 ranked by population — larger than 54% of them. The median age here is 20.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Wales city earn a median of $38,125 a year, 51.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 53% below the $81,250 median for the 73 Alaska 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 28% 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 Wales city is valued at $96,900, 68.1% below the national figure and 68% below the $305,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 67.1% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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 20.7 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address. With 286 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Wales city against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Wales 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.