Caribou, ME population, income and ZIP codes

Caribou city is a mid-size town in Maine, with 7,427 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #20 of 155 ranked by population — larger than 87% of them. The median age here is 52.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Caribou city earn a median of $54,271 a year, 30.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 8% below the $58,992 median for the 106 Maine 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 11.8% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Caribou city is valued at $120,300, 60.3% below the national figure and 46% below the $221,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $696 a month, 50.5% below the national figure, or roughly $8,352 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 15.4% 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 2.2×, 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. 74.1% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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.

A median age of 52.3 puts Caribou city well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

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.