La Crosse, WI population, income and ZIP codes

La Crosse city is a small city in Wisconsin, with 51,791 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #12 of 807 ranked by population — larger than 98% of them. The median age here is 30.3 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 La Crosse city earn a median of $53,803 a year, 31.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $73,880 median for the 395 Wisconsin 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 21.6% 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 La Crosse city is valued at $196,600, 35.2% below the national figure and 7% below the $211,900 peer median, while median gross rent runs $977 a month, 30.5% below the national figure, or roughly $11,724 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.8% 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 3.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 46.1% 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.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.