Lawrence, MA

ZIP code 01841 is assigned to Lawrence, MA, and falls within Essex County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 52,761 people live inside it.

At 17,338 residents per square mile spread over 3.043 square miles, 01841 reads as a dense urban area. It is a populous postal code, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings run below the national median. At $54,525, 01841 sits in the lower half, ahead of 23% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 01841 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $393,800 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,565 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 67.7% of occupied homes are rented, a pattern typical of city centres, student areas and neighbourhoods with a lot of apartment stock.

The building stock is dominated by small multi-family buildings of two to four units, which account for 54.6% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1938, making the housing here largely pre-war. At 2.6%, vacancy is low — housing here is tightly held.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 31.5 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 3.09 people on average, with 74.0% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 26.0 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 68.3% of workers.

Beyond addressing mail, 01841 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 01841 offers a compact profile of Lawrence: 52,761 residents, a median household income of $54,525, 14.6% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 10.3%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 01841 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Lawrence may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.