Category · 4 articles
Income & Jobs
Household income, wages, occupation mix and unemployment across U.S. ZIPs, cities and states.
What you'll find here
Articles in Income & Jobs sit at the intersection of public data and lived experience. Every piece starts from a specific Census table, traces the number back to the household-level question that produced it, and then asks the harder question: what does this actually mean for the people, places, and markets it describes?
We avoid the two failure modes of most data writing: throwing a chart on a page and assuming it speaks for itself, or over-interpreting a single year of estimates as a trend. Where a finding warrants caveats — margin of error, geographic crosswalks, ACS1 vs ACS5 trade-offs — those caveats are in the body, not buried in a footnote.
Featured
9 min read
U.S. Median Household Income, Explained: What $78,538 Really Means
The Census Bureau's headline median household income figure hides enormous geographic spread. We break down how it's computed, why it differs from average income, and how it varies state-by-state.
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7 min read
Bachelor's Degree Attainment by ZIP Code: Where College Concentrates
Educational attainment is one of the strongest predictors of local income, home values, and migration. Here's how to read Census table B15003 and what it shows.
6 min read
The Highest-Income Counties in America
U.S. county-level median income runs from under $35,000 to over $185,000. The highest-income counties are remarkably concentrated.
10 min read
Highest-Income ZIP Codes in Florida (2026 ACS5 Data)
Florida's wealthiest ZIPs are concentrated in three corridors: Palm Beach, the southwest Gulf Coast (Naples, Marco Island), and the Miami-area barrier islands. We rank the top ten and break down the demographics behind each.