Frackville, PA

ZIP code 17931 is assigned to Frackville, PA, and falls within Schuylkill County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 8,726 people live inside it.

At 1,648 residents per square mile spread over 5.296 square miles, 17931 reads as a suburban area. It is a smaller postal code by population, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings run below the national median. At $55,636, 17931 sits in the lower half, ahead of 24% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 17931 costs below the national median. A typical home is valued at $116,500 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $704 a month. Ownership dominates: 81.0% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, which usually signals an established residential area with relatively low turnover.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 86.0% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1940, making the housing here largely pre-war.

The population skews broadly in line with the national age profile, with a median age of 41.2 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 4.15 people on average, with 62.7% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 27.5 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 81.1% of workers, while 10.1% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 17931 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 17931 offers a compact profile of Frackville: 8,726 residents, a median household income of $55,636, 11.0% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 2.9%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 17931 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Frackville may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.