ZIP code 49861

ZIP 49861 is a very small community in Baraga County, Michigan, with 534 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #878 of 992 ranked by population — larger than 11% of them. The median age here is 61.6 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 ZIP 49861 earn a median of $66,806 a year, 14.9% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 14.3% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 49861 is valued at $229,200, 24.5% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 96.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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 61.6 puts ZIP 49861 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 534 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 49861 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 49861 because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.

ZIP 49861 is tabulated inside Baraga County, Michigan, one of 6 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 992 across Michigan. Fewer than 2,500 people are counted here, so the ZIP behaves like a village delivery route rather than a neighbourhood. 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 49861 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 49861 reports a median household income of $66,806, 16% above the $57,368 county median, and close to the $66,726 typical MI ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $229,200, 94% above the county figure and 28% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Michigan charges 6% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 49861.

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 49861 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.