Gary, IN population, income and ZIP codes

Gary city is a small city in Indiana, with 68,604 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #11 of 976 ranked by population — larger than 98% of them. The median age here is 36.4 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 Gary city earn a median of $37,380 a year, 52.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 39% below the $61,527 median for the 355 Indiana cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 32.9% 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 Gary city is valued at $85,300, 71.9% below the national figure and 41% below the $145,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $975 a month, 30.7% below the national figure, or roughly $11,700 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 31.3% 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 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. 47.4% 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.

Gary city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 31.3% of median income while homes cost only 2.3× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

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.