Clay Center, KS population, income and ZIP codes

Clay Center city is a small town in Kansas, with 4,148 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #73 of 740 ranked by population — larger than 90% of them. The median age here is 42.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Clay Center city earn a median of $56,422 a year, 28.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 11% below the $63,750 median for the 200 Kansas 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 11.5% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Clay Center city is valued at $133,600, 56% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $131,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $950 a month, 32.4% below the national figure, or roughly $11,400 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.2% 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 2.4×, 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. 60% 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.