Oak Ridge, TN population, income and ZIP codes

Oak Ridge city is a small city in Tennessee, with 32,088 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #26 of 504 ranked by population — larger than 95% of them. The median age here is 39.2 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 Oak Ridge city earn a median of $71,000 a year, 9.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% above the $55,988 median for the 307 Tennessee 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 12.9% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Oak Ridge city is valued at $233,500, 23% below the national figure and 22% above the $191,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,076 a month, 23.5% below the national figure, or roughly $12,912 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.2% 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 3.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 64.5% 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.

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.