98531 — Centralia, Washington

Unemployment across Centralia, WA, which contains 98531, is 4.6% — higher than in all but 41% of the 3,127 measured US ZIP areas.

Employment across Centralia, WA, which contains 98531, grew 0.3% over the past year, to 32,094 employed residents.

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

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index for the non-metropolitan parts of Washington is up 35% over five years, and up 1.8% 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 $2,370 a year in real estate taxes, about 0.69% of the median home value.

HUD’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom, set near the 40th percentile of recent new leases, is $1,279, some 13% above the $1,130 tenants already here pay.

At HUD’s Fair Market Rent of $1,279 a month for a two-bedroom, keeping rent to 30% of income takes a household income of about $51,200 a year, about 81% of the median household income here of $63,406.

The typical renter household here spends 32% of its income on rent, above the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened. Median gross rent runs $1,130 a month.

A median home at $343,000 costs 4.0 times the median income of its owner-occupied households, $85,088, above the historic benchmark of about 3 times income.

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.

4 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 78°F and January a low of 33°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 50.6 inches, including 3.9 inches of snow.

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.

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. Centralia 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.

Cost of living

Price parities are published for metropolitan areas, and this place lies outside one.

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. Cost of living is published where the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures it, though not for this place. 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 Centralia 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.