98409 — Tacoma, Washington

Unemployment of 5.3% is lower than 19% of the 1,061 measured US ZIP areas.

Employment fell 1.3% over the past year, to 119,962 employed residents.

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

Median rent of $1,645 takes 27% of median household income, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.

A median home costs 5.4 times median household income here, well above the historic benchmark, at a level conventionally described as seriously unaffordable.

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.

80% 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 5.7 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is above the median for measured US ZIP areas.

The Building Permits Survey is not published for ZIP areas. This is the figure for Tacoma, WA, the city containing this ZIP code.

5 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 76°F and January a low of 36°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 42.0 inches.

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.

The hazards accounting for most of this area's expected annual loss are earthquake, heat wave and avalanche.

Hazard ratings are AreaProfile calculations derived from the FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 (December 2025). FEMA publishes at county level. ZIP values are the land-area-weighted mean of the counties the ZIP Code Tabulation Area intersects. Expected annual loss is not allocated below county level. FEMA does not endorse this presentation. Higher physical resilience means lower exposure.

AreaProfile does not yet publish tax comparisons. No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, methodology transparency and update cadence, and the product rule is to omit a dimension rather than estimate it. The Area Score is calculated without a tax component and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.

Nothing on AreaProfile is individualized tax advice.

2 major airports lie within 100 miles, the nearest 18 miles away.

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.

Put 98409 side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated August 29, 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.

How this ZIP area compares with Tacoma as a whole. Both figures come from the same ACS release, so the comparison is like for like.

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.