Salem, NJ population, income and ZIP codes

Salem city is a mid-size town in New Jersey, with 5,315 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #283 of 700 ranked by population — larger than 59% of them. The median age here is 36.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Salem city earn a median of $40,650 a year, 48.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 62% 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 31.2% 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 Salem city is valued at $69,300, 77.2% below the national figure and 83% below the $412,500 peer median, while median gross rent runs $992 a month, 29.4% below the national figure, or roughly $11,904 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 29.3% 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 1.7×, 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. 34.7% 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.

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.