Bay St. Louis, MS population, income and ZIP codes

Bay St. Louis city is a mid-size town in Mississippi, with 9,971 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #42 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 90% of them. The median age here is 52.8 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 Bay St. Louis city earn a median of $70,082 a year, 10.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 59% above the $44,178 median for the 191 Mississippi 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 13.7% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Bay St. Louis city is valued at $231,900, 23.6% below the national figure and 91% above the $121,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,138 a month, 19.1% below the national figure, or roughly $13,656 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.5% 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 3.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 75.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 52.8 puts Bay St. Louis 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.

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.