Key Statistics

Key West is a fairly small, fairly dense, and noticeably older and more educated town with a relatively high income and homeownership rate, but it also carries a bit of socioeconomic weight with higher poverty than Florida, a sizable 65-plus population, and a commute and housing pattern that tells you many residents live in a place that is charming, constrained, and always in motion.

Key West is a high cost, high income, tourism powered pressure cooker: with tourism and visitor spending keeping the lights and menus busy, cruise and charter dollars flowing, occupancy staying near capacity, and arts and festivals adding extra economic fuel, the same island also faces rising housing and utilities costs that make prosperity feel less like a vacation and more like a trade, as shown by a $1.2 billion tourism GDP share, a $1.05 million median home value, $62,500 average salary, and a cost of living index 42.3 percent above the US average.

Key West is a barely above-sea-level subtropical dot, stitched together from 5.6 square miles of land and water, buffered by mangroves and reefs, refreshed by 39.3 inches of rainfall, and made famously resilient yet alarmingly exposed, with nearly all its freshwater drawn from a fragile aquifer, significant coral cover and seagrass beds under pressure, and sea levels rising about 9.4 millimeters per year while decades of hurricanes have already left their mark.

Key West, settled by Bahamians in 1823 and fortified by anti piracy ambitions, somehow became the richest wreckers’ jackpot, a hurricane battered refuge, and later a creative hotspot where cigar magnates, writers, and even Hollywood all left their fingerprints, all while the island famously staged a secession as the Conch Republic to protest the world’s seriousness.

Key West may be small, but its tourism engine runs like a well-oiled rum cocktail: from cruise arrivals rebounding to 80 percent, to Duval Street’s daily crowds, world-famous photo stops and museums, and a steady stream of tours, festivals, rentals, and wildlife experiences, the island turns ordinary sunsets into annual visitor numbers that keep climbing while the local economy keeps cheering.