Brookings, SD population, income and ZIP codes

Brookings city is a mid-size town in South Dakota, with 23,710 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #4 of 485 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 24.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Brookings city earn a median of $61,979 a year, 21.1% below the national figure of $78,538 and 5% below the $65,500 median for the 79 South Dakota 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 16.1% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Brookings city is valued at $243,600, 19.7% below the national figure and 26% above the $192,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $862 a month, 38.7% below the national figure, or roughly $10,344 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 16.7% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 48.5% 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.

A median age of 24.7 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

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.