Pawleys Island, SC population, income and ZIP codes

Pawleys Island town is a very small community in South Carolina, with 116 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #440 of 475 ranked by population — larger than 7% of them. The median age here is 69.7 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 Pawleys Island town earn a median of $118,750 a year, 51.2% above the national figure of $78,538 and 124% above the $53,071 median for the 263 South 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 5.2% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Pawleys Island town is valued at $1,538,500, 407.1% above the national figure and 769% above the $177,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 13×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 92.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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.

Home values sit at 13× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 69.7 puts Pawleys Island 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for Pawleys Island town because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.