Lake Charles, LA population, income and ZIP codes

Lake Charles city is a small city in Louisiana, with 81,679 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #6 of 489 ranked by population — larger than 98% of them. The median age here is 36.2 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 Lake Charles city earn a median of $56,864 a year, 27.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 6% above the $53,775 median for the 268 Louisiana 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 23.2% 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 Lake Charles city is valued at $204,000, 32.8% below the national figure and 18% above the $173,000 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,090 a month, 22.5% below the national figure, or roughly $13,080 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23% 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 3.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 61.1% 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.