Ridgecrest, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Ridgecrest city is a small city in California, with 28,138 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #280 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 82% of them. The median age here is 34.8 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Ridgecrest city earn a median of $88,107 a year, 12.2% above the national figure of $78,538 and 3% 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 11.7% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Ridgecrest city is valued at $235,800, 22.3% below the national figure and 60% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,178 a month, 16.2% below the national figure, or roughly $14,136 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 16% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 59.7% 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.

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.