Needles, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Needles city is a small town in California, with 4,882 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #671 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 58% of them. The median age here is 49.6 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 Needles city earn a median of $39,876 a year, 49.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 56% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California 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 29.1% 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 Needles city is valued at $134,400, 55.7% below the national figure and 77% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $742 a month, 47.2% below the national figure, or roughly $8,904 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.3% 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 3.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 54.8% 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.