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Place dossier plate
SheetTX-EL-PASO-TX · El Paso, TX 678,147 pop · income 33rd pct · 188 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 El Paso
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest El Paso on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
South Congaree · lowest
58,726
South Congaree · lowest
58,726 median HH income
54.1% of the leader · rank #1
El Paso · this city
58,734
El Paso · this city
58,734 median HH income
54.1% of the leader · rank #2
Springfield · near
58,741
Springfield · near
58,741 median HH income
54.1% of the leader · rank #3
Dodge City · near
58,750
Dodge City · near
58,750 median HH income
54.1% of the leader · rank #4
Emmet · near
58,750
Emmet · near
58,750 median HH income
54.1% of the leader · rank #5
Plano · highest
108,649
Plano · highest
108,649 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 El Paso 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: 678,147.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
El Paso - the verdict
El Paso ranks in the 33rd percentile for household income and the 38th percentile for safety nationally, out of every US city with at least 1,000 residents. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
33rd
percentile, household income
34th
percentile, home value
40th
percentile, median rent
38th
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: El Paso, TX
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 678,147 residents in El Paso, a mid-sized U.S. city within Texas. El Paso households earn a median of $58,734 annually, below the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 15.7%. Home values in El Paso run a median of $171,700, and the median resident age is 34.1 years. About 27.5% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 56.5% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 1,887 residential building permits were authorized in El Paso (Slowing), down 17% from five years earlier, per Census BPS data. El Paso reports a comparatively low crime rate: per-100,000 total crime stands at 1772.4 in FBI UCR data, below the national average (a voluntary reporting program, read this as reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA puts El Paso's yearly average temperature at 66.2°F with 8.8 inches of precipitation per year and 2.8 inches of snowfall.
Texas tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: on BEA's 100-equals-national-average cost index, Texas scores 97.1 (Near Average), per the 2024 Regional Price Parities release. A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,149 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $223 across Texas, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. FEMA's National Risk Index rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.0 out of 100 (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of El Paso'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 comparison shortlist to climate and hazard context to housing and income to schools and households to reported crime to population change to work and mobility to within-city variation; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For El Paso, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, annual population history, commute-mode shares, within-city Census tract profiles, matched public-school count, FBI reported-crime rates.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
Which cities make useful reference points for El Paso?
Within Texas, the closest population matches are Fort Worth (941,311 residents, $76,602 income); Arlington (394,769 residents, $73,519 income); Austin (967,862 residents, $91,461 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Washington, DC (672,079 residents); Nashville-Davidson, TN (684,298 residents); Oklahoma City, OK (688,693 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.
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.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 66.2°F, with 8.8 inches of precipitation and 2.8 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Texas is 49.0 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.
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.
How far does income reach against housing in El Paso?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 2.9 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 15.7%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
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.
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.
PlainCities matches 188 Census tracts to this city.
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 El Paso?
The NCES join finds 219 public schools within the city match. 27.5% 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.
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.
Matched public schools
219
Bachelor's degree+
27.5%
Poverty estimate
15.7%
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What can the FBI record say about safety in El Paso?
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.
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1772.4 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 22% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Property rate
1494.0
Violent rate
278.4
Total reported rate
1772.4
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
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.
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +3,716 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +0.5% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 1,887 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Period change
+0.5%
2025 estimate
683,012
2020 estimate
679,296
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
What does the journey to work look like in El Paso?
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.
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 76.5%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
Public transit
1.0%
Work from home
7.8%
Drive alone
76.5%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 301,943 workers age 16+.
Below median income · poverty 15.7% (High poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
97.1 (US=100)
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, Texas average
F
City profile score · El Paso, TX
38/100
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-
27.5%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Cost of living C-
97.1 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
278 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Household income F
$58,734
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate F
15.7%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
El Paso profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 54/100 (C-) · 27.5%
Cost of living: 53/100 (C-) · 97.1 index
Violent crime: 36/100 (F) · 278 /100k
Household income: 33/100 (F) · $58,734
Poverty rate: 21/100 (F) · 15.7%
Where El Paso sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
El Paso'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 - El Paso highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
El Paso, TX (this city): home $171,700, crime 1,772/100k
Washington, DC : home $724,600, crime 4,514/100k
Oklahoma City, OK : home $215,100, crime 3,570/100k
Boston, MA : home $710,400, crime 2,650/100k
Portland, OR : home $557,600, crime 6,246/100k
Fort Worth, TX : home $277,300, crime 3,158/100k
Arlington, TX : home $276,400, crime 2,896/100k
Austin, TX : home $512,700, crime 3,709/100k
Corpus Christi, TX : home $197,100, crime 3,875/100k
Plano, TX : home $440,600, crime 1,618/100k
Lubbock, TX : home $197,900, crime 3,450/100k
How does El Paso compare to other US cities?
Where El Paso sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income33% higher than other cities
Home value34% pricier than other cities
Median rent40% pricier than other cities
Safety38% 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 Texas alone, El Paso ranks #414 of 624 Texas 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 El Paso against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Texas only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Texas-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places El Paso near the bottom of Texas's cities
Among the 1,663 Texas cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, El Paso ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares El Paso only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#885 of 1,520
42nd percentile in Texas
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,663
0th percentile in Texas
Median Home Value
#684 of 1,505
55th percentile in Texas
Poverty Rate
#474 of 1,663
71st percentile in Texas
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#440 of 1,663
73rd percentile in Texas
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 Texas only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
33rd percentile nationally for median household income · 38th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
El Paso's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
El Paso'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 El Paso's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$171,700Among the most affordablemore affordable than 66% 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
El Paso's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.9×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#6,271 of 15,516
More affordable than 60% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#9 of 117
Large cities (200,000–999,999)
At 2.9×, El Paso sits in the affordable band:
national rank #6,271 of 15,516 and #9 of 117large cities (200,000–999,999).
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
$58,734El Paso, TX median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context El Paso, TX median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for El Paso, TX.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)27.5%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)15.7%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)56.5%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
678,147
Median Income
$58,734
Median Home Value
$171,700
Median Age
34.1
Poverty Rate
15.7%
Labor force participation
56.5%
Bachelor's Degree+
27.5%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1772.4
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
278.4
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1494.0
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.
Climate
Avg Temperature
66.2°F
Annual Precipitation
8.8"
Annual Snowfall
2.8"
Schools
Total Schools
219
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
El Paso's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
679,296 residents
2021
678,522 residents
2022
678,968 residents
2023
682,050 residents
2024
685,231 residents
2025
683,012 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
🏗️ Slowing
Total Permits (2024)
1,887
housing units authorized
Single-Family
1,644
detached homes
Multifamily
243
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
2.8
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
2,286
1,873
413
$501.3M
2020
1,762
1,570
192
$389.4M
2021
2,233
1,961
272
$495.3M
2022
1,968
1,649
319
$426.3M
2023
1,852
1,572
280
$404.0M
2024
1,887
1,644
243
$416.5M
Permit volume decreased 17% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
76.5%
Carpool
11.1%
Public Transit
1.0%
Walk
1.1%
Work from Home
7.8%
Other
2.5%
Based on 301,943 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Texas statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $223
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Texas at $223 (electricity about $130 , water and sewer about $48 ).
These are Texas statewide averages, not a meter reading for El Paso. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Texas's BEA cost-of-living index is 97.1 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around El Paso is $1,149/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Texas statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.0 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Texas statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county El Paso sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How El Paso compares to similar-size Texas 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.