Hays, KS population, income and ZIP codes

Hays city is a mid-size town in Kansas, with 21,078 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #21 of 740 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 30.2 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 Hays city earn a median of $56,861 a year, 27.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 11% below the $63,750 median for the 200 Kansas 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 19.9% 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 Hays city is valued at $220,100, 27.5% below the national figure and 68% above the $131,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $890 a month, 36.7% below the national figure, or roughly $10,680 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 58.3% 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.