Charleston, IL population, income and ZIP codes

Charleston city is a mid-size town in Illinois, with 17,212 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #147 of 1,462 ranked by population — larger than 90% of them. The median age here is 28.8 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 Charleston city earn a median of $49,057 a year, 37.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 34% 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 25.3% 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 Charleston city is valued at $133,700, 55.9% below the national figure and 25% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $819 a month, 41.7% below the national figure, or roughly $9,828 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20% 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 2.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 46.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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 28.8 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.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.