Waterbury, Connecticut
Area Profile
114,869 residents. Public schools, jobs, income, housing cost, climate and natural-hazard risk for Waterbury.
Missing required signal: resilience. AreaProfile withholds a score rather than inferring the missing dimensions.
Employment conditions sit below most comparable published city profiles: unemployment is 7.6% and the Opportunity signal places Waterbury in the bottom 1%.
Rent takes 28% of median household income here, below the 30% threshold conventionally called cost-burdened, and the median home is 4.0 times that income.
A typical July reaches 84°F and a typical January falls to 19°F, on thirty-year normals.
At a glance
Jobs & opportunity
Unemployment of 7.6% is lower than 2% of the 3,904 measured US cities.
Employment fell 5.3% over the past year, to 47,199 employed residents.
| Metric | Value | Compared with peers | Source period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income ±$2,278 | $51,886 | Bottom 26% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Per capita income ±$1,682 | $29,542 | Bottom 35% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Poverty rate | 24.7% | Top 16% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Average commute | 28.9 min | Top 39% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Bachelor's degree or higher | 17.3% | Bottom 41% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Employment | 47,199 | Bottom 49% | June 2026 |
| Employment change (3 years) | -5.9% | Bottom 2% | June 2026 |
| Employment change (year over year) | -5.3% | Bottom 2% | June 2026 |
| Labor force | 51,066 | Top 50% | June 2026 |
| Labor force participation | 59.7% | Bottom 47% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Unemployment change (year over year) | 1.9% | Top 1% | June 2026 |
| Unemployment rate | 7.6% | Top 2% | June 2026 |
Schools
How it’s calculated →There are 13.1 students for every full-time teacher, fewer than in most measured places.
| School | District | Students | Per teacher | Math | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crosby High School | Waterbury School District | 1,453 | 17.1 | — | — |
| John F. Kennedy High School | Waterbury School District | 1,391 | 14.3 | — | — |
| Wilby High School | Waterbury School District | 1,196 | 14.6 | — | — |
| Michael F. Wallace Middle School | Waterbury School District | 1,059 | 11.5 | — | — |
| West Side Middle School | Waterbury School District | 848 | 10.7 | — | — |
| W. F. Kaynor Technical High School | Connecticut Technical Education and Career System | 831 | 11.7 | — | — |
| Waterbury Arts Magnet School | Waterbury School District | 820 | 12.1 | — | — |
| North End Middle School | Waterbury School District | 766 | 9.9 | — | — |
| Waterbury Career Academy | Waterbury School District | 709 | 12.0 | — | — |
| Rotella Interdistrict Magnet School | Waterbury School District | 614 | 16.2 | — | — |
| Wendell L. Cross School | Waterbury School District | 606 | 13.8 | — | — |
| Maloney Interdistrict Magnet School | Waterbury School District | 590 | 14.4 | — | — |
77.3% of students here are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. That describes the circumstances families arrive with rather than how the schools perform, which is why AreaProfile shows it and does not score it.
Public schools only, from the NCES Common Core of Data. Schools are placed by ZIP code, so this is which schools are in this place rather than which one a particular address is zoned for — district boundaries do not follow municipal ones, and enrollment zones change. Fully virtual schools are excluded: they enroll students from across the state while reporting one administrative address, and counting them here would describe a school population this place does not have. The assessment covers grades 3 through 8, so a high school shows no proficiency figure — a dash in those columns means the test was not given at that school, not that it performed badly. Proficiency is measured against Connecticut’s own standard, so it compares cleanly within the state and only broadly against other states; AreaProfile therefore ranks it within state. The directory is current, while the proficiency figures are from the last school year with national coverage before the pandemic interrupted testing.
Housing & affordability
How it’s calculated →Median rent of $1,225 takes 28% of median household income, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.
A median home costs 4.0 times median household income here, above the historic benchmark of about three times income.
| Metric | Value | Compared with peers | Source period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home price to income | 4.02 | Top 27% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Homeownership rate | 47.2% | Bottom 8% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Housing units ±986 | 49,956 | Top 1% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Median gross rent ±$38 | $1,225 | Top 31% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Median home value ±$6,084 | $208,500 | Top 45% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Rent as a share of income | 28.3% | Top 9% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
| Vacancy rate | 8.6% | Bottom 45% | 2024 ACS 5-Year |
Both affordability measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with, so the comparison is like for like. They describe housing cost against local earnings and are not a cost-of-living index — transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not included, and a place can look affordable here and still be expensive to live in for reasons this does not capture.
Growth & development
How it’s calculated →An AreaProfile calculation combining permit volume per resident, its direction over one and three years, population change and employment growth. Permit volume alone is not the measure.
Population has grown 2% since 2020, reaching 115,908 in 2024.
Permitting has turned downward after moving the other way the year before.
79% of recently permitted units are in buildings of five or more homes, so new supply is concentrated in apartments and condominiums rather than detached houses.
At 1.0 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is below the median for measured US cities.
Weather & climate
5 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 84°F and January a low of 19°F.
Normal annual precipitation is 44.9 inches.
| Metric | Value | Source period |
|---|---|---|
| Annual precipitation | 44.9" | 1991-2020 Normals |
| Average January low | 19°F | 1991-2020 Normals |
| Average July high | 84°F | 1991-2020 Normals |
| Comfortable months | 5 | 1991-2020 Normals |
| Seasonal temperature swing | 45°F | 1991-2020 Normals |
Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. They describe what a typical year looks like rather than what the weather is doing today.
What this profile does not cover
Three things people look for are missing from every AreaProfile page, and each is missing for a reason rather than by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.
- Reported crime
- The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer is the only source for reported offences with national coverage and a published method, and it requires an API key AreaProfile does not hold. Arrest counts, news volume and commercial “safety scores” are not substituted in the meantime. What is published above under Safety is a different measurement — deaths rather than offences, from death certificates rather than police returns — and it covers no property crime at all.
- Taxes
- No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, transparent methodology and update cadence. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.
- Full cost of living
- No public source publishes one with national coverage and a documented method. Housing affordability above is computed from published rent, price and income, and excludes transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes — commuting cost in particular tends to offset suburban housing savings.
Access
7 major airports lie within 100 miles, the nearest 32 miles away.
| Airport | Code | Distance | Longest runway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bradley Intl | BDL | 32 mi | 9,510 ft |
| Westfield-Barnes Rgnl | BAF | 45 mi | 9,000 ft |
| New York Stewart Intl | SWF | 55 mi | 11,817 ft |
Airport identity, position and runway data come from the FAA. “Major airport” is an AreaProfile classification — a public-use civil airport with a paved runway of at least 8,000 feet — not an FAA hub designation. Distances are straight-line, not driving distance.
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Data & methodology
| Used for | Source | Source period | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access | Federal Aviation Administration Airports (NASR) — Aeronautical Data Delivery Service | NASR current cycle | 28-day NASR cycle |
| Climate | NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020 (Monthly) | 1991-2020 Normals | Every ten years (next release follows the 2001–2030 period) |
| Jobs | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics | June 2026 | Monthly |
| Demographics | U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program | July 1, 2024 estimate | Annual (vintage released each spring) |
| Demographics, Housing, Income, Jobs | U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (Table-Based Summary File) | 2024 ACS 5-Year | Annual (5-year estimates released each December) |
| Development | U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey | 12 months ending July 2026 | Monthly, roughly three weeks after the reference month |
| schools | U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data and EDFacts assessments | 2024-25 school year | Directory annually; assessment results as EDFacts releases them |
Profile recalculated August 30, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology or browse every source.