Bemidji, MN population, income and ZIP codes

Bemidji city is a mid-size town in Minnesota, with 15,490 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #72 of 914 ranked by population — larger than 92% of them. The median age here is 29.8 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 Bemidji city earn a median of $53,850 a year, 31.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 29% below the $75,469 median for the 361 Minnesota 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 20.7% 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 Bemidji city is valued at $189,500, 37.5% below the national figure and 21% below the $240,400 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,004 a month, 28.6% below the national figure, or roughly $12,048 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.4% 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 3.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 41.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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 29.8 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

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.