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Place dossier plate
SheetIL-CICERO-IL · Cicero, IL 83,223 pop · income 48th 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 Cicero
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Cicero on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Champaign · lowest
57,544
Champaign · lowest
57,544 median HH income
48.5% of the leader · rank #1
Oak Ridge · near
68,542
Oak Ridge · near
68,542 median HH income
57.8% of the leader · rank #2
Cicero · this city
68,548
Cicero · this city
68,548 median HH income
57.8% of the leader · rank #3
Wailua · near
68,548
Wailua · near
68,548 median HH income
57.8% of the leader · rank #4
Roseland · near
68,551
Roseland · near
68,551 median HH income
57.8% of the leader · rank #5
Shidler · near
68,553
Shidler · near
68,553 median HH income
57.8% of the leader · rank #6
Arlington Hei… · highest
118,532
Arlington Hei… · highest
118,532 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 Cicero 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: 83,223.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Cicero - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Cicero places in the 48th percentile for household income and the 43rd percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
48th
percentile, household income
52nd
percentile, home value
18th
percentile, median rent
43rd
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: Cicero, IL
Illinois's Cicero is a small city, with 83,223 residents per the latest Census Bureau ACS figures. Cicero households earn a median of $68,548 annually, below the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 10.0%. Cicero's housing stock carries a median value of $236,000, and the median resident age is 34.3 years. About 11.0% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 60.3% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 0 residential units were authorized in 2024 (No Permits), down 100% from five years earlier. Cicero reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR figures show 1581.2 crimes per 100,000 residents, below the national average (reporting is voluntary across agencies, so treat this as reporting activity rather than a definitive danger score).
Illinois tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: the state registers 100.0 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Near Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,063 per month. EIA 2023 residential energy data puts Illinois's average monthly utility costs around $240 (state average). Commute times here average 28.4 minutes, with 68.7% driving alone and 4.7% working from home, per Census ACS commuting data. Natural-hazard exposure scores 54.5 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Cicero'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 work and mobility to housing and income to schools and households to comparison shortlist to reported crime to population change; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Cicero, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates, matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, annual population history.
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.
Question 1
What does the journey to work look like in Cicero?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 68.7%. The reported mean trip to work is 28.4 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. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
How far does income reach against housing in Cicero?
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 3.4 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 10.0%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
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 17 public schools within the city match. 11.0% 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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Cicero?
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 Illinois, the closest population matches are Bloomington (78,703 residents, $75,449 income); Champaign (88,822 residents, $57,544 income); Waukegan (88,919 residents, $70,578 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Farmington Hills, MI (83,316 residents); Buena Park, CA (83,052 residents); Warwick, RI (82,871 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.
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.
Reported crime
What can the FBI record say about safety in Cicero?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1581.2 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 31% 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.
Total reported rate
1581.2
Violent rate
347.3
Property rate
1233.9
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -3,086 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -3.6% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 0 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 downward. A falling count can reflect migration, household size, annexation boundaries, or estimation noise, so it is a prompt to inspect the full series rather than a claim about local economic health.
2020 estimate
84,944
2025 estimate
81,858
Period change
-3.6%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
Below median income · poverty 10.0% (Above-median poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
100.0 (US=100)
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Illinois average
F
City profile score · Cicero, IL
34/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
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.
Household income D
$68,548
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate D
10.0%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living D
100.0 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Violent crime F
347 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Bachelor's+ share F
11.0%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Cicero profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Household income: 47/100 (D) · $68,548
Poverty rate: 40/100 (D) · 10.0%
Cost of living: 40/100 (D) · 100.0 index
Violent crime: 26/100 (F) · 347 /100k
Bachelor's+ share: 9/100 (F) · 11.0%
Where Cicero sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Cicero'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 - Cicero highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
Cicero, IL (this city): home $236,000, crime 1,581/100k
Farmington Hills, MI : home $333,200, crime 879/100k
Buena Park, CA : home $771,900, crime 2,613/100k
Warwick, RI : home $322,000, crime 1,227/100k
Longview, TX : home $182,700, crime 2,690/100k
Cranston, RI : home $348,800, crime 1,145/100k
Champaign, IL : home $199,700, crime 2,781/100k
Waukegan, IL : home $177,600, crime 2,060/100k
Schaumburg, IL : home $312,200, crime 2,489/100k
Evanston, IL : home $472,300, crime 2,884/100k
Arlington Heights, IL : home $403,200, crime 930/100k
How does Cicero compare to other US cities?
Cicero measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income48% higher than other cities
Home value52% pricier than other cities
Median rent18% pricier than other cities
Safety43% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
National percentiles can mask local variation. Looking only at Illinois, Cicero ranks #320 of 455 Illinois cities by lowest crime rate - a narrower, more locally useful cut than the national comparison above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Cicero against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Illinois only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Illinois-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Cicero near the bottom of Illinois's cities
Among the 1,336 Illinois cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Cicero ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Cicero only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#630 of 1,311
52nd percentile in Illinois
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,336
0th percentile in Illinois
Median Home Value
#259 of 1,315
80th percentile in Illinois
Poverty Rate
#455 of 1,335
65th percentile in Illinois
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#1,036 of 1,336
22nd percentile in Illinois
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 Illinois only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
48th percentile nationally for median household income · 43rd percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Cicero's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Cicero'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 Cicero's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$236,00048th percentilemore affordable than 48% 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
Cicero's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.4×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#8,746 of 15,516
More affordable than 44% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#200 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 3.4×, Cicero sits in the moderate band:
national rank #8,746 of 15,516 and #200 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
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
$68,548Cicero, IL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Cicero, IL median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Cicero, IL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)11.0%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)10.0%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)60.3%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
83,223
Median Income
$68,548
Median Home Value
$236,000
Median Age
34.3
Poverty Rate
10.0%
Labor force participation
60.3%
Bachelor's Degree+
11.0%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1581.2
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
347.3
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1233.9
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
17
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Cicero's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
84,944 residents
2021
83,317 residents
2022
82,029 residents
2023
81,721 residents
2024
82,124 residents
2025
81,858 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
Total Permits (2024)
0
housing units authorized
Single-Family
0
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
1
1
0
$0.2M
2020
3
3
0
$0.7M
2021
1
1
0
$0.3M
2022
1
1
0
$0.3M
2023
0
0
0
-
2024
0
0
0
-
Permit volume decreased 100% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
28.4 minutes
Drive Alone
68.7%
Carpool
15.3%
Public Transit
7.1%
Walk
3.2%
Work from Home
4.7%
Other
1.0%
Based on 39,028 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Illinois statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $240
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Illinois at $240 (electricity about $100 , water and sewer about $50 ).
These are Illinois statewide averages, not a meter reading for Cicero. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Illinois's BEA cost-of-living index is 100.0 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Cicero is $1,063/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Illinois statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 54.5 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Illinois statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Cicero sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Cicero compares to similar-size Illinois 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.