Dunellen, NJ population, income and ZIP codes

Dunellen borough is a mid-size town in New Jersey, with 7,711 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #214 of 700 ranked by population — larger than 69% of them. The median age here is 41.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. 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 Dunellen borough earn a median of $84,789 a year, 8% above the national figure of $78,538 and 21% below the $106,926 median for the 543 New Jersey cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 23.1% 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 Dunellen borough is valued at $380,200, 25.3% above the national figure and 8% below the $412,500 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,461 a month, 3.9% above the national figure, or roughly $17,532 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.7% 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 4.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 63.3% 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.

Median income runs above the national figure while poverty also runs above it — a split distribution, not a uniformly comfortable place. Averages hide that; the two numbers together do not.

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.