Hays, MT population, income and ZIP codes

Hays CDP is a very small community in Montana, with 967 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #102 of 497 ranked by population — larger than 79% of them. The median age here is 34.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Hays CDP earn a median of $57,875 a year, 26.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 8% below the $62,992 median for the 94 Montana cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 29.6% 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 Hays CDP is valued at $61,100, 79.9% below the national figure and 76% below the $250,900 peer median, while median gross rent runs $550 a month, 60.9% below the national figure, or roughly $6,600 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 11.4% 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 1.1×, 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. 49.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

With 967 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Hays CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

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.