Lafayette, LA population, income and ZIP codes

Lafayette city is a mid-size city in Louisiana, with 121,537 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #5 of 489 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 37.1 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 Lafayette city earn a median of $61,454 a year, 21.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 14% above the $53,775 median for the 268 Louisiana 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 19.1% 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 Lafayette city is valued at $251,300, 17.2% below the national figure and 45% above the $173,000 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,065 a month, 24.3% below the national figure, or roughly $12,780 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.8% 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 4.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 55% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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.