New Bedford, MA population, income and ZIP codes

New Bedford city is a mid-size city in Massachusetts, with 100,731 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #9 of 248 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 37 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 New Bedford city earn a median of $56,025 a year, 28.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 44% below the $99,537 median for the 222 Massachusetts 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 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 New Bedford city is valued at $324,400, 6.9% above the national figure and 35% below the $497,400 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,085 a month, 22.8% below the national figure, or roughly $13,020 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.2% 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 5.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 40% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.