Smithers, WV population, income and ZIP codes

Smithers city is a very small community in West Virginia, with 891 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #163 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 63% of them. The median age here is 52.5 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 Smithers city earn a median of $32,237 a year, 59% below the national figure of $78,538 and 39% below the $52,974 median for the 148 West Virginia cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 35.9% 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 Smithers city is valued at $72,800, 76% below the national figure and 43% below the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $496 a month, 64.7% below the national figure, or roughly $5,952 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.5% 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 2.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 60.2% 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 52.5 puts Smithers city 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. With 891 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Smithers city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.