ZIP code 08861

ZIP 08861 is a small city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, with 58,264 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #13 of 598 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 37.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 08861 earn a median of $60,464 a year, 23% 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 19.2% 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 08861 is valued at $340,900, 12.4% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,623 a month, 15.4% above the national figure, or roughly $19,476 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 32.2% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 35% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

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.

ZIP 08861 is tabulated inside Middlesex County, New Jersey, one of 36 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 598 across New Jersey. 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 08861 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 08861 reports a median household income of $60,464, 45% below the $109,238 county median, and 45% below the $109,182 typical NJ ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $340,900, 18% below the county figure and 20% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,623 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

New Jersey charges 6.625% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 08861.

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 08861 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.