ZIP code 61820

ZIP 61820 is a small city in Champaign County, Illinois, with 38,481 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #83 of 1,396 ranked by population — larger than 94% of them. The median age here is 22.2 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 ZIP 61820 earn a median of $31,031 a year, 60.5% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 43.9% 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 ZIP 61820 is valued at $175,900, 42% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,077 a month, 23.4% below the national figure, or roughly $12,924 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 41.6% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is severely stretched — a median-income renter clears the cost-burden line by a wide margin before utilities beyond the gross-rent definition. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 20% 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 22.2 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.

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.

ZIP 61820 is tabulated inside Champaign County, Illinois, one of 29 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 1,396 across Illinois. This is a dense urban ZIP, where a single postal boundary can hold more residents than an entire rural county. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 61820 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 61820 reports a median household income of $31,031, 66% below the $90,195 county median, and 57% below the $72,734 typical IL ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $175,900, close to the county figure and 20% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,077 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Illinois charges 6.25% statewide, and local governments overlapping 61820 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 61820 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.