Los Angeles, CA

ZIP code 90021 is assigned to Los Angeles, CA, and falls within Los Angeles 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 3,152 people live inside it.

At 1,594 residents per square mile spread over 1.977 square miles, 90021 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 are well below the national median. At $32,250, 90021 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 2% 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 90021 costs far above the national median. A typical home is valued at $1,075,800 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $984 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 93.1% 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 larger apartment buildings of twenty units or more, which account for 52.1% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1938, making the housing here largely pre-war.

The population skews broadly in line with the national age profile, with a median age of 39.8 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.05 people, and 29.5% are family households.

Getting to work takes 34.8 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 34.2% of workers, while 18.9% take public transit, 26.0% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 90021 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, 90021 offers a compact profile of Los Angeles: 3,152 residents, a median household income of $32,250, 20.2% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 14.8%. 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. 90021 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Los Angeles 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.