Passaic, NJ

ZIP code 07055 is assigned to Passaic, NJ, and falls within Passaic 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 69,651 people live inside it.

At 22,260 residents per square mile spread over 3.129 square miles, 07055 reads as a dense urban area. It is one of the more heavily populated postal codes in the country, 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 $56,780, 07055 sits in the lower half, ahead of 26% 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 07055 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $406,500 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,392 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 76.5% 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 36.0% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1938, making the housing here largely pre-war. At 2.8%, vacancy is low — housing here is tightly held.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 30.9 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 3.41 people on average, with 76.1% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 28.3 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 48.9% of workers, while 13.0% take public transit, 11.3% walk. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 07055 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, 07055 offers a compact profile of Passaic: 69,651 residents, a median household income of $56,780, 16.9% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 11.3%. 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. 07055 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Passaic 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.