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Place dossier plate
SheetPA-HARRISBURG-PA · Harrisburg, PA 50,092 pop · income 16th pct · 67 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 Harrisburg
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Harrisburg on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
York · lowest
47,115
York · lowest
47,115 median HH income
18.8% of the leader · rank #1
Cherokee · near
47,778
Cherokee · near
47,778 median HH income
19.1% of the leader · rank #2
Harrisburg · this city
47,783
Harrisburg · this city
47,783 median HH income
19.1% of the leader · rank #3
Oconto Falls · near
47,786
Oconto Falls · near
47,786 median HH income
19.1% of the leader · rank #4
Wadley · near
47,788
Wadley · near
47,788 median HH income
19.1% of the leader · rank #5
Rossville · near
47,791
Rossville · near
47,791 median HH income
19.1% of the leader · rank #6
McLean · highest
250,001
McLean · highest
250,001 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 Harrisburg 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: 50,092.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Harrisburg - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Harrisburg places in the 16th percentile for household income and the 19th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
16th
percentile, household income
18th
percentile, home value
54th
percentile, median rent
19th
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: Harrisburg, PA
50,092 people live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - a small city by U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Harrisburg households earn a median of $47,783 annually, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 27.5%. Home values in Harrisburg run a median of $121,000, and the median resident age is 32.8 years. 26.3% of adults here have a bachelor's degree or higher; 60.6% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
The Census Building Permit Survey recorded 49 residential units authorized here in 2024 (Growing), up 17% from five years earlier. Harrisburg's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 2754.8 incidents per 100,000 residents, above the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA puts Harrisburg's yearly average temperature at 51.9°F with 45.2 inches of precipitation per year and 23.9 inches of snowfall.
Pennsylvania tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: the state registers 97.6 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Near Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,225 per month statewide. EIA 2023 residential energy data puts Pennsylvania's average monthly utility costs around $260 (state average). Natural-hazard exposure scores 67.4 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Moderate).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Harrisburg'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 climate and hazard context to within-city variation to schools and households to population change to reported crime to housing and income to comparison shortlist; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Harrisburg, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, annual population history, FBI reported-crime rates, commute-mode shares, within-city Census tract profiles, matched public-school count.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
What does the journey to work look like in Harrisburg?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 58.5%. 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 physical conditions frame life in Harrisburg?
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 51.9°F, with 45.2 inches of precipitation and 23.9 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Pennsylvania is 67.4 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.
What can 67 Census tracts reveal inside Harrisburg?
PlainCities matches 67 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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Harrisburg?
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 Pennsylvania, the closest population matches are Levittown (50,930 residents, $101,619 income); York (44,830 residents, $47,115 income); Wilkes-Barre (44,217 residents, $47,970 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Covina, CA (50,143 residents); Draper, UT (50,159 residents); Jeffersonville, IN (50,176 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 Harrisburg?
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 40 public schools within the city match. 26.3% 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
27.5%
Bachelor's degree+
26.3%
Matched public schools
40
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
Is Harrisburg growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +451 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +0.9% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 49 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
The recent population line is broadly flat. That makes the composition of change more important than the headline count: housing turnover, household size, and age structure can shift even when the total barely moves.
2020 estimate
50,071
2025 estimate
50,522
Period change
+0.9%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Harrisburg?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 2754.8 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 21% 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
2754.8
Violent rate
762.2
Property rate
1992.6
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
How far does income reach against housing in Harrisburg?
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 2.5 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 27.5%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Value / income
2.5×
Home value
$121,000
Household income
$47,783
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
Low income · poverty 27.5% (Highest-decile poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
97.6 (US=100)
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, Pennsylvania average
F
City profile score · Harrisburg, PA
23/100
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.
Bachelor's+ share C-
26.3%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Cost of living C-
97.6 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Household income F
$47,783
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate F
27.5%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Violent crime F
762 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Harrisburg profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 52/100 (C-) · 26.3%
Cost of living: 50/100 (C-) · 97.6 index
Household income: 17/100 (F) · $47,783
Poverty rate: 3/100 (F) · 27.5%
Violent crime: 3/100 (F) · 762 /100k
Where Harrisburg sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Harrisburg'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 - Harrisburg highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Harrisburg, PA (this city): home $121,000, crime 2,755/100k
Covina, CA : home $666,000, crime 1,965/100k
Draper, UT : home $726,000, crime 1,273/100k
Jeffersonville, IN : home $208,500, crime 1,988/100k
Lakewood, OH : home $241,500, crime 1,283/100k
Murray, UT : home $470,200, crime 3,597/100k
York, PA : home $103,100, crime 2,392/100k
Wilkes-Barre, PA : home $108,000, crime 1,989/100k
Altoona, PA : home $113,600, crime 2,185/100k
State College, PA : home $414,400, crime 917/100k
How does Harrisburg compare to other US cities?
Harrisburg measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income16% higher than other cities
Home value18% pricier than other cities
Median rent54% pricier than other cities
Safety19% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
Zoom in to just Pennsylvania and the picture shifts: Harrisburg ranks #374 of 402 Pennsylvania cities by lowest crime rate, a different read than the national percentile above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Harrisburg against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Pennsylvania only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Pennsylvania-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Harrisburg near the bottom of Pennsylvania's cities
Among the 1,865 Pennsylvania cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Harrisburg ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Harrisburg only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#1,536 of 1,765
13th percentile in Pennsylvania
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,865
0th percentile in Pennsylvania
Median Home Value
#1,282 of 1,790
28th percentile in Pennsylvania
Poverty Rate
#70 of 1,856
96th percentile in Pennsylvania
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#697 of 1,861
62nd percentile in Pennsylvania
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 Pennsylvania only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
16th percentile nationally for median household income · 19th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Harrisburg's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Harrisburg'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 Harrisburg's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$121,000Among the most affordablemore affordable than 82% 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
Harrisburg's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.5×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#4,166 of 15,516
More affordable than 73% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#41 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 2.5×, Harrisburg sits in the affordable band:
national rank #4,166 of 15,516 and #41 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
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
$47,783Harrisburg, PA median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Harrisburg, PA median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Harrisburg, PA.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)26.3%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)27.5%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)60.6%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
50,092
Median Income
$47,783
Median Home Value
$121,000
Median Age
32.8
Poverty Rate
27.5%
Labor force participation
60.6%
Bachelor's Degree+
26.3%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
2754.8
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
762.2
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1992.6
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
51.9°F
Annual Precipitation
45.2"
Annual Snowfall
23.9"
Schools
Total Schools
40
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Harrisburg's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
50,071 residents
2021
50,217 residents
2022
50,150 residents
2023
50,242 residents
2024
50,559 residents
2025
50,522 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
🏗️ Growing
Total Permits (2024)
49
housing units authorized
Single-Family
1
detached homes
Multifamily
48
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
1
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
42
0
42
$5.7M
2020
70
0
70
$8.6M
2021
53
0
53
$6.3M
2022
52
52
0
$15.5M
2023
134
15
119
$21.9M
2024
49
1
48
$5.7M
Permit volume increased 17% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
58.5%
Carpool
9.7%
Public Transit
5.6%
Walk
9.3%
Work from Home
13.8%
Other
3.1%
Based on 22,303 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Pennsylvania statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $260
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Pennsylvania at $260 (electricity about $120 , water and sewer about $52 ).
These are Pennsylvania statewide averages, not a meter reading for Harrisburg. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Pennsylvania's BEA cost-of-living index is 97.6 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Harrisburg is $1,225/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Pennsylvania statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 67.4 / 100 (Moderate).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Pennsylvania statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Harrisburg sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Harrisburg compares to similar-size Pennsylvania 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.