Portland, OR

ZIP code 97203 is assigned to Portland, OR, and falls within Multnomah 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 33,159 people live inside it.

At 3,077 residents per square mile spread over 10.776 square miles, 97203 reads as a densely built-up area. It is a populous 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 track close to the national picture. The median of $77,619 puts 97203 near the middle of the pack, ahead of 62% 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 97203 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $468,600 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,551 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 58.9% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 71.2% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1963, making the housing here mid-century. At 3.9%, vacancy is low — housing here is tightly held.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 34.1 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.56 people, and 46.8% are family households.

Getting to work takes 29.6 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 55.1% of workers, while 21.9% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 97203 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, 97203 offers a compact profile of Portland: 33,159 residents, a median household income of $77,619, 45.0% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 5.8%. 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. 97203 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Portland 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.