Morgantown, WV population, income and ZIP codes

Morgantown city is a small city in West Virginia, with 30,273 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #3 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 24 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 Morgantown city earn a median of $42,245 a year, 46.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 20% below the $52,974 median for the 148 West Virginia cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 33.6% 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 Morgantown city is valued at $238,200, 21.5% below the national figure and 87% above the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $888 a month, 36.8% below the national figure, or roughly $10,656 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 25.2% 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 5.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 44.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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 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.

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.