51503 — Council Bluffs, Iowa

Unemployment across Council Bluffs, IA, which contains 51503, is 4.0%, lower than in 64% of the 3,127 measured US ZIP areas.

Employment across Council Bluffs, IA, which contains 51503, grew 1.1% over the past year, to 31,259 employed residents.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish labor-force data for ZIP areas. This is the figure for Council Bluffs, IA, the city containing this ZIP code.

Prices for everything a household buys run about 8% below the national average — the Bureau of Economic Analysis index reads 92.5, against 100 for the nation. Nationally, housing drives most of the spread between places in this index; other goods vary far less.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index for the Omaha, NE-IA Metro Area is up 40% over five years, and up 4.2% over the last year. It follows repeat sales of the same homes, so it measures price change rather than which homes happened to sell.

Homeowners here who pay a tax bill pay a median of $3,765 a year in real estate taxes, about 1.44% of the median home value.

HUD’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom, set near the 40th percentile of recent new leases, is $1,160, some 17% above the $991 tenants already here pay.

At HUD’s Fair Market Rent of $1,160 a month for a two-bedroom, keeping rent to 30% of income takes a household income of about $46,400 a year, about 59% of the median household income here of $79,010.

The typical renter household here spends 29% of its income on rent, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened. Median gross rent runs $991 a month.

A median home at $262,300 costs 2.6 times the median income of its owner-occupied households, $102,770, close to the historic benchmark for an affordable market.

These measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with. They compare housing cost with local earnings only: transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not in them. How to read affordability, the two rent figures and the cost-of-living index.

5 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 88°F and January a low of 15°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 31.9 inches, including 27.1 inches of snow.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. How to read climate and air quality.

Each of these is absent for a reason, not by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them; the weighting is on the methodology page.

Reported crime

Offenses reported to police are published by department rather than by town, so AreaProfile shows a rate only on city profiles, and only where that city’s department submitted every month of a year. A ZIP area is not a jurisdiction, so no department reports for one. Council Bluffs carries the figure where its department reported a full year. A partial year is never scaled up to look complete, and arrest counts or news volume are never substituted for it.

Air quality

The EPA publishes an air-quality index only where a monitor sits. There is none in this county, and a modeled value would be a different kind of number from the measured ones everywhere else on this page.

Taxes

Income and sales taxes are not published: no source covers them nationally with a method open enough to check. Property taxes are shown in the housing section but are not part of the score. The cost-of-living index above is a price level for all consumption, not a household budget, and it excludes taxes. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.

Anything about a specific address

Every figure describes an area, not a street or a house.

Profile recalculated October 8, 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 every source with how often each updates.

How this ZIP area compares with Council Bluffs as a whole. Both figures come from the same ACS release, so the comparison is like for like — a gap here is a real difference between the two places, not two surveys disagreeing.

Some demographic statistics use Census ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, which approximate but do not exactly match USPS ZIP delivery geography. See the methodology for how AreaProfile maps between them.