East Spencer, NC population, income and ZIP codes

East Spencer town is a small town in North Carolina, with 1,309 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #413 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 46% of them. The median age here is 53.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 East Spencer town earn a median of $34,696 a year, 55.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 43% below the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina 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 28.9% 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 East Spencer town is valued at $108,500, 64.2% below the national figure and 51% below the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $733 a month, 47.9% below the national figure, or roughly $8,796 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 25.4% 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 3.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 52.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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 53.6 puts East Spencer town 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.