Salem, KY

ZIP code 42078 is assigned to Salem, KY, and falls within Livingston 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 1,718 people live inside it.

At 19 residents per square mile spread over 88.678 square miles, 42078 reads as a rural area. It is a sparsely populated 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 are well below the national median. At $48,155, 42078 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 14% 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 42078 costs well below the national median. A typical home is valued at $78,700 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $672 a month. Ownership dominates: 86.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, which usually signals an established residential area with relatively low turnover.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 78.2% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1975, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 26.2% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews older than the national median, with a median age of 46.7 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.52 people, and 62.2% are family households.

Getting to work takes 34.9 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 87.2% of workers.

Beyond addressing mail, 42078 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, 42078 offers a compact profile of Salem: 1,718 residents, a median household income of $48,155, 10.1% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 4.5%. 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. 42078 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Salem 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.