Rockford, IL population, income and ZIP codes

Rockford city is a mid-size city in Illinois, with 147,649 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #5 of 1,462 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 37.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in Rockford city earn a median of $53,328 a year, 32.1% below the national figure of $78,538 and 28% below the $74,244 median for the 698 Illinois 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 21.9% 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 Rockford city is valued at $120,900, 60.2% below the national figure and 32% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $954 a month, 32.1% below the national figure, or roughly $11,448 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.5% 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 2.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 53.8% 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.

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.