Ronald, WA

ZIP code 98940 is assigned to Ronald, WA, and falls within Kittitas 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 461 people live inside it.

At 3 residents per square mile spread over 159.849 square miles, 98940 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 here sit well above the national picture. The median household income of $122,801 places 98940 in the upper reaches of American postal codes, ahead of 92% 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 98940 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $491,000 against a US median of $207,500. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 69.7% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 95.7% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1997, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 74.0% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews considerably older than the national median, with a median age of 57.8 against 42 nationally. Households average just 1.68 people, and 26.6% consist of one person living alone — a signature of areas with a lot of studio and one-bedroom stock.

Getting to work takes 15.0 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 41.7% of workers, while 28.1% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 98940 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, 98940 offers a compact profile of Ronald: 461 residents, a median household income of $122,801, 35.4% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 0.0%. 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. 98940 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Ronald 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.