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Place dossier plate
SheetNY-WATERTOWN-NY · Watertown, NY 24,574 pop · income 19th pct · 36 tracts
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 Watertown
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Watertown on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Mount Olive C… · lowest
49,688
Mount Olive C… · lowest
49,688 median HH income
22.6% of the leader · rank #1
Tidmore Bend · near
49,688
Tidmore Bend · near
49,688 median HH income
22.6% of the leader · rank #2
Kearny · near
49,688
Kearny · near
49,688 median HH income
22.6% of the leader · rank #3
Watertown · this city
49,692
Watertown · this city
49,692 median HH income
22.6% of the leader · rank #4
Bensley · near
49,695
Bensley · near
49,695 median HH income
22.6% of the leader · rank #5
Dix Hills · highest
219,636
Dix Hills · highest
219,636 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #6
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 Watertown 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: 24,574.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Watertown - the verdict
Watertown ranks in the 19th percentile for household income and the 5th percentile for safety nationally, out of every US city with at least 1,000 residents. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
19th
percentile, household income
27th
percentile, home value
78th
percentile, median rent
5th
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: Watertown, NY
24,574 people live in Watertown, New York - a small city by U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Median household income here is $49,692 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 13.4%. Home values in Watertown run a median of $149,800, and the median resident age is 35.6 years. About 25.9% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 54.8% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 0 residential building permits were authorized in Watertown (No Permits), per Census BPS data. Watertown's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 4527.9 incidents per 100,000 residents, above the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA climate normals record an annual average temperature of 45.3°F with 37.1 inches of precipitation per year.
New York carries a cost-of-living premium: on BEA's 100-equals-national-average cost index, New York scores 107.9 (Above Average), per the 2024 Regional Price Parities release. HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,579 per month. Monthly utility costs average around $285 across New York, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. FEMA's National Risk Index rates natural-hazard exposure at 69.4 out of 100 (Moderate).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Watertown'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 within-city variation to housing and income to schools and households to reported crime to climate and hazard context to comparison shortlist to population change; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Watertown, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, FBI reported-crime rates, within-city Census tract profiles, annual population history.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
What does the journey to work look like in Watertown?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 77.8%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
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.
What can 36 Census tracts reveal inside Watertown?
PlainCities matches 36 Census tracts to this city.
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
How far does income reach against housing in Watertown?
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 3.0 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 13.4%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Which cities make useful reference points for Watertown?
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 New York, the closest population matches are Smithtown (24,940 residents, $148,852 income); Dix Hills (25,042 residents, $219,636 income); Kingston (23,942 residents, $65,413 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Greenbelt, MD (24,572 residents); Selma, CA (24,586 residents); Landover, MD (24,558 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.
Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Watertown?
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 9 public schools within the city match. 25.9% 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
13.4%
Bachelor's degree+
25.9%
Matched public schools
9
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Watertown?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 4527.9 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 99% higher 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
4527.9
Violent rate
599.3
Property rate
3928.6
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
The two sources should not be blended into one comfort or safety score. Use the climate values for baseline conditions and the risk index as a prompt to inspect specific hazards, insurance, and local emergency guidance for a particular address.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 45.3°F, with 37.1 inches of precipitation. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for New York is 69.4 out of 100. Climate normals describe long-run weather; the FEMA score on PlainCities is a state average of county NRI inputs and combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience.
FEMA risk index (state avg)
69.4
Annual precipitation
37.1 in
Mean temperature
45.3°F
NOAA Climate Normals and FEMA National Risk Index (state-averaged on PlainCities). Hazard context is not address-level.
Is Watertown growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -1,041 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -4.2% 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
24,558
2025 estimate
23,517
Period change
-4.2%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
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.
Bachelor's+ share C-
25.9%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Poverty rate F
13.4%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income F
$49,692
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Cost of living F
107.9 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
599 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Watertown profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 51/100 (C-) · 25.9%
Poverty rate: 26/100 (F) · 13.4%
Household income: 20/100 (F) · $49,692
Cost of living: 12/100 (F) · 107.9 index
Violent crime: 10/100 (F) · 599 /100k
Where Watertown sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Watertown'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 - Watertown highlighted among 8 peers.Read the chart values
Watertown, NY (this city): home $149,800, crime 4,528/100k
Greenbelt, MD : home $258,600, crime 5,026/100k
Selma, CA : home $288,700, crime 2,172/100k
Maywood, CA : home $595,000, crime 1,921/100k
Wyandotte, MI : home $159,700, crime 1,064/100k
Ridgeland, MS : home $259,600, crime 1,700/100k
Kingston, NY : home $277,900, crime 1,995/100k
Peekskill, NY : home $376,800, crime 1,181/100k
How does Watertown compare to other US cities?
Here's how Watertown stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income19% higher than other cities
Home value27% pricier than other cities
Median rent78% pricier than other cities
Safety5% 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 New York alone, Watertown ranks #52 of 55 New York 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 Watertown against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to New York only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
New York-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Watertown near the bottom of New York's cities
Among the 1,256 New York cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Watertown ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Watertown only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#1,092 of 1,205
9th percentile in New York
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,256
0th percentile in New York
Median Home Value
#872 of 1,202
27th percentile in New York
Poverty Rate
#214 of 1,246
83rd percentile in New York
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#816 of 1,254
34th percentile in New York
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 New York only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
19th percentile nationally for median household income · 5th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Watertown's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Watertown'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 Watertown's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$149,800Among the most affordablemore affordable than 73% 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
Watertown's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.0×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#6,769 of 15,516
More affordable than 56% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#928 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 3.0×, Watertown sits in the moderate band:
national rank #6,769 of 15,516 and #928 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
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
$49,692Watertown, NY median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Watertown, NY median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Watertown, NY.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)25.9%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)13.4%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)54.8%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
24,574
Median Income
$49,692
Median Home Value
$149,800
Median Age
35.6
Poverty Rate
13.4%
Labor force participation
54.8%
Bachelor's Degree+
25.9%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
4527.9
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
599.3
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
3928.6
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.
Climate
Avg Temperature
45.3°F
Annual Precipitation
37.1"
Annual Snowfall
N/A
Schools
Total Schools
9
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Watertown's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
24,558 residents
2021
24,667 residents
2022
24,390 residents
2023
24,108 residents
2024
23,857 residents
2025
23,517 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
0
0
0
-
2020
0
0
0
-
2021
0
0
0
-
2022
0
0
0
-
2023
0
0
0
-
2024
0
0
0
-
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
77.8%
Carpool
7.4%
Public Transit
1.9%
Walk
6.1%
Work from Home
4.0%
Other
2.8%
Based on 11,265 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
New York statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $285
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across New York at $285 (electricity about $130 , water and sewer about $65 ).
These are New York statewide averages, not a meter reading for Watertown. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
New York's BEA cost-of-living index is 107.9 (Above Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Watertown is $1,579/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to New York statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 69.4 / 100 (Moderate).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a New York statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Watertown sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Watertown compares to similar-size New York 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, NOAA Climate Normals, 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.