Rocky Mount, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Rocky Mount city is a small city in North Carolina, with 54,175 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #20 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 41.8 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 Rocky Mount city earn a median of $52,927 a year, 32.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 14% below the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina 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 21.2% 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 Rocky Mount city is valued at $148,300, 51.1% below the national figure and 33% below the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $919 a month, 34.6% below the national figure, or roughly $11,028 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.8% 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 2.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 47.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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.