Milwaukee, WI population, income and ZIP codes

Milwaukee city is a major city in Wisconsin, with 569,756 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it first of 807 ranked by population. The median age here is 32.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in Milwaukee city earn a median of $51,888 a year, 33.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 30% 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 23.3% 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 Milwaukee city is valued at $172,000, 43.3% below the national figure and 19% below the $211,900 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,033 a month, 26.5% below the national figure, or roughly $12,396 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.9% 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 3.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 41.5% 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.

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.