Carbondale, IL population, income and ZIP codes

Carbondale city is a mid-size town in Illinois, with 21,813 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #111 of 1,462 ranked by population — larger than 92% of them. The median age here is 24.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Carbondale city earn a median of $29,670 a year, 62.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 60% below the $74,244 median for the 698 Illinois 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 36.9% 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 Carbondale city is valued at $124,800, 58.9% below the national figure and 30% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $750 a month, 46.7% below the national figure, or roughly $9,000 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 30.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 4.2×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 26.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

A median age of 24.9 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.

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.