ZIP code 97534

ZIP 97534 is a small town in Josephine County, Oregon, with 1,028 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #281 of 428 ranked by population — larger than 34% of them. The median age here is 66.1 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 97534 earn a median of $30,231 a year, 61.5% below the national figure of $78,538. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 31.1% 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 97534 is valued at $257,500, 15.1% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 8.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 80.6% 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.

Home values sit at 8.5× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 66.1 puts ZIP 97534 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 97534 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 97534 is tabulated inside Josephine County, Oregon, one of 10 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 428 across Oregon. 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 97534 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 97534 reports a median household income of $30,231, 41% below the $51,532 county median, and 58% below the $71,485 typical OR ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $257,500, 32% below the county figure and 33% below 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.

Oregon charges 0% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 97534.

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 97534 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.