Catherine, AL

ZIP code 36728 is assigned to Catherine, AL, and falls within Wilcox 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 1,015 people live inside it.

At 9 residents per square mile spread over 115.827 square miles, 36728 reads as a rural area. It is a sparsely populated postal code, 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 are well below the national median. At $18,239, 36728 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 0% 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 36728 costs well below the national median. A typical home is valued at $45,400 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $485 a month. Ownership dominates: 93.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, which usually signals an established residential area with relatively low turnover.

The building stock is dominated by larger apartment buildings of twenty units or more, which account for 71.6% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1994, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 32.2% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews notably young, with a median age of 22.8 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 3.73 people on average, with 65.4% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 45.9 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 71.6% of workers.

Beyond addressing mail, 36728 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, 36728 offers a compact profile of Catherine: 1,015 residents, a median household income of $18,239, 1.5% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 52.5%. 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. 36728 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Catherine 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.