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Place dossier plate
SheetAL-ALABASTER-AL · Alabaster, AL 33,633 pop · income 71st pct
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Alabaster
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Alabaster on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Gadsden · lowest
38,699
Gadsden · lowest
38,699 median HH income
27.7% of the leader · rank #1
Denver · near
90,156
Denver · near
90,156 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #2
Manchester · near
90,156
Manchester · near
90,156 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #3
Kitsap Lake · near
90,156
Kitsap Lake · near
90,156 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #4
Alabaster · this city
90,163
Alabaster · this city
90,163 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #5
Garden Grove · near
90,166
Garden Grove · near
90,166 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #6
Baldwin · highest
139,840
Baldwin · highest
139,840 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Alabaster on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 33,633.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Alabaster - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Alabaster places in the 71st percentile for household income and the 42nd percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
71st
percentile, household income
54th
percentile, home value
1st
percentile, median rent
42nd
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Alabaster, AL
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 33,633 residents in Alabaster, a small city within Alabama. Median household income here is $90,163 per year, above the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 3.1%. Home values in Alabaster run a median of $242,600, and the median resident age is 39.5 years. 40.8% of adults here have a bachelor's degree or higher; 65.7% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 107 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Building Boom), up 128% from five years earlier. Alabaster reports a comparatively low crime rate: per-100,000 total crime stands at 1609.9 in FBI UCR data, below the national average (a voluntary reporting program, read this as reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Living costs in Alabama run below the national norm: on BEA's 100-equals-national-average cost index, Alabama scores 88.8 (Well Below Average), per the 2024 Regional Price Parities release. A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $936 per month statewide. EIA 2023 residential energy data puts Alabama's average monthly utility costs around $245 (state average). Workers in Alabaster report an average commute of 26.2 minutes, with 74.7% driving alone and 15.3% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 61.5 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Moderate).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Alabaster's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from housing and income to comparison shortlist to reported crime to work and mobility to population change to schools and households; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Alabaster, city-specific coverage includes matched public-school count, local building permits, commute-mode shares, annual population history, FBI reported-crime rates.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
1. Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Alabaster?
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 2.7 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 3.1%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Which cities make useful reference points for Alabaster?
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
Within Alabama, the closest population matches are Gadsden (33,617 residents, $38,699 income); Opelika (31,944 residents, $58,763 income); Northport (30,991 residents, $77,781 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Uniondale, NY (33,637 residents); Kennesaw, GA (33,627 residents); Baldwin, NY (33,595 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Alabaster?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1609.9 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 29% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
What does the journey to work look like in Alabaster?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 74.7%. The reported mean trip to work is 26.2 minutes.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. Remote work has a visible role in the local pattern. That can reduce commute exposure for some workers, but it says nothing about job availability or broadband quality; read it alongside income and housing rather than as a stand-alone lifestyle score.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Population change
Is Alabaster growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +1,350 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +4.0% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 107 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point upward. Growth can increase housing demand and service needs, but the permit record must move in the same direction before calling it a supply response; the two series measure different things.
2020 estimate
33,398
2025 estimate
34,748
Period change
+4.0%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
What does the education layer cover for Alabaster?
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
The NCES join finds 4 public schools within the city match. 40.8% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
Poverty estimate
3.1%
Bachelor's degree+
40.8%
Matched public schools
4
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Cost of living A+
88.8 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Poverty rate B+
3.1%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Bachelor's+ share B+
40.8%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime B
99 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Household income B-
$90,163
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Alabaster profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 90/100 (A+) · 88.8 index
Poverty rate: 78/100 (B+) · 3.1%
Bachelor's+ share: 76/100 (B+) · 40.8%
Violent crime: 71/100 (B) · 99 /100k
Household income: 69/100 (B-) · $90,163
Where Alabaster sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Alabaster's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Alabaster highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Alabaster, AL (this city): home $242,600, crime 1,610/100k
Kennesaw, GA : home $291,300, crime 1,099/100k
Harker Heights, TX : home $269,000, crime 1,125/100k
Statesboro, GA : home $158,600, crime 2,610/100k
Walla Walla, WA : home $356,600, crime 2,498/100k
Gadsden, AL : home $101,900, crime 3,159/100k
Opelika, AL : home $213,700, crime 3,185/100k
Enterprise, AL : home $198,500, crime 3,003/100k
Phenix City, AL : home $160,000, crime 4,248/100k
Daphne, AL : home $309,700, crime 899/100k
How does Alabaster compare to other US cities?
Here's how Alabaster stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income71% higher than other cities
Home value54% pricier than other cities
Median rent1% pricier than other cities
Safety42% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Alabama alone, Alabaster ranks #98 of 222 Alabama cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Alabaster against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Alabama only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Alabama-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Alabaster near the bottom of Alabama's cities
Among the 556 Alabama cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Alabaster ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Alabaster only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#50 of 530
91st percentile in Alabama
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 556
0th percentile in Alabama
Median Home Value
#59 of 517
89th percentile in Alabama
Poverty Rate
#472 of 556
15th percentile in Alabama
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#38 of 556
93rd percentile in Alabama
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Alabama only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
71st percentile nationally for median household income · 42nd percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Alabaster's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Alabaster's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Alabaster's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$242,60046th percentilemore affordable than 46% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Alabaster's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.7×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#4,985 of 15,516
More affordable than 68% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#536 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 2.7×, Alabaster sits in the affordable band:
national rank #4,985 of 15,516 and #536 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
The multiple is comparatively compact among tracked cities, but a low ratio can still coexist with slow demand or household-level hardship.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$90,163Alabaster, AL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Alabaster, AL median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Alabaster, AL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)40.8%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)3.1%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)65.7%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
33,633
Median Income
$90,163
Median Home Value
$242,600
Median Age
39.5
Poverty Rate
3.1%
Labor force participation
65.7%
Bachelor's Degree+
40.8%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1609.9
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
99.0
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1511.0
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
4
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Alabaster's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
33,398 residents
2021
33,732 residents
2022
33,890 residents
2023
34,177 residents
2024
34,463 residents
2025
34,748 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📈 Building Boom
Total Permits (2024)
107
housing units authorized
Single-Family
107
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
3.2
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
47
47
0
$15.8M
2020
152
152
0
$49.0M
2021
80
80
0
$27.7M
2022
67
67
0
$28.6M
2023
111
111
0
$24.2M
2024
107
107
0
$26.3M
Permit volume increased 128% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
26.2 minutes
Drive Alone
74.7%
Carpool
9.0%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
0.4%
Work from Home
15.3%
Other
0.6%
Based on 17,117 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Alabama statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $245
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Alabama at $245 (electricity about $138 , water and sewer about $45 ).
These are Alabama statewide averages, not a meter reading for Alabaster. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Alabama's BEA cost-of-living index is 88.8 (Well Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Alabaster is $936/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Alabama statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 61.5 / 100 (Moderate).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Alabama statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Alabaster sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Alabaster compares to similar-size Alabama cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.