Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Unemployment of 3.4%, lower than in 84% of the 4,226 measured US cities.

Employment fell 1.2% over the past year, to 14,672 employed residents.

40% of adults hold a four-year degree, higher than 81% of measured US cities.

Prices for everything a household buys run about 8% below the national average — the Bureau of Economic Analysis index reads 92.2, 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 Knoxville, TN Metro Area is up 64% over five years, and up 3.9% 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 $1,835 a year in real estate taxes, about 0.68% of the median home value.

HUD’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom, set near the 40th percentile of recent new leases, is $1,360, some 20% above the $1,131 tenants already here pay.

At HUD’s Fair Market Rent of $1,360 a month for a two-bedroom, keeping rent to 30% of income takes a household income of about $54,400 a year, about 75% of the median household income here of $72,311.

The typical renter household here spends 27% of its income on rent, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened. Median gross rent runs $1,131 a month.

A median home at $270,200 costs 2.8 times the median income of its owner-occupied households, $95,981, 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.

7 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 87°F and January a low of 29°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 59.7 inches, including 4.4 inches of snow.

Air quality measures a median index of 41, in the Good band, and no day in the year passed 100.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. Air quality is measured by EPA monitors and published by county only where a monitor sits; a county without one shows nothing rather than an estimate, and a county reading is still the county’s. 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.

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.

Every city here is measured on the same scale from the same source releases, so the comparison is like for like. A higher Area Score reflects AreaProfile’s standardized weighting rather than a judgment about which is the better place to live.

Put Oak Ridge side by side with a similar place.

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.

Every ZIP area in Oak Ridge with census figures of its own, largest first. The ones linked below diverge enough from the city as a whole to carry a full profile; the rest track Oak Ridge closely, so their figures are here rather than on a page that would repeat this one. An Area Score is calculated for published profiles only, which is why it is blank on those rows.