Palm Desert, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Palm Desert city is a small city in California, with 51,551 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #182 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 88% of them. The median age here is 56.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Palm Desert city earn a median of $79,508 a year, 1.2% above the national figure of $78,538 and 13% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 11.3% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Palm Desert city is valued at $491,600, 62% above the national figure and 17% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,717 a month, 22.1% above the national figure, or roughly $20,604 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 25.9% 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 6.2×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 64.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Home values sit at 6.2× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 56.7 puts Palm Desert 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.