Baton Rouge, LA

ZIP code 70802 is assigned to Baton Rouge, LA, and falls within East Baton Rouge Parish. 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 23,964 people live inside it.

At 3,390 residents per square mile spread over 7.07 square miles, 70802 reads as a densely built-up area. It is a mid-sized 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 are well below the national median. At $34,082, 70802 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 3% 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 70802 costs below the national median. A typical home is valued at $105,100 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $935 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 68.8% of occupied homes are rented, a pattern typical of city centres, student areas and neighbourhoods with a lot of apartment stock.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 58.5% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1965, making the housing here mid-century. The vacancy rate of 29.3% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 31.9 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.44 people, and 40.5% are family households.

Getting to work takes 20.9 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 62.6% of workers, while 10.4% walk. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 70802 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, 70802 offers a compact profile of Baton Rouge: 23,964 residents, a median household income of $34,082, 23.6% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 11.4%. 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. 70802 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Baton Rouge 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.