ZIP code 87943

ZIP 87943 is a very small community in Sierra County, New Mexico, with 217 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #282 of 372 ranked by population — larger than 24% of them. The median age here is 68.8 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 87943 earn a median of $45,074 a year, 42.6% below the national figure of $78,538. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 12.9% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 87943 is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 100% 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. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

A median age of 68.8 puts ZIP 87943 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 217 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 87943 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld home value, gross rent for ZIP 87943 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 87943 is tabulated inside Sierra County, New Mexico, one of 9 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 372 across New Mexico. This is one of the smallest tabulated ZIP areas in the state, the kind of rural route where a single subdivision or farm cluster accounts for most addresses. 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 87943 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 87943 reports a median household income of $45,074, 6% above the $42,342 county median, and 16% below the $53,479 typical NM ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of not published. 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.

New Mexico charges 4.875% statewide, and local governments overlapping 87943 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 87943 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.