Emerson, Nebraska.
Typical home $194,426 (+7.5% in a year). Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$559 (+121%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,485 +7%
- $180,941$194,426 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $47,729 +33%
- $146,696$194,426 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Emerson$1,020
- Nebraska$1,461
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Emerson, NE rose 7.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Emerson, Thurston County, Nebraska
Emerson is a village of 840 people in Thurston County. 70% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 30% are rented. Unemployment in Thurston County was 2.9% in August 2026, and the county had 4.0% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Emerson is a small village in northeast Nebraska, with a population older than in many American towns. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and typical home values are modest. Winters are cold and snowy, and summers turn warm, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, and shops also employing many. Across Thurston County, some of the largest workplaces are Winnebago Public Schools District 17, Twelve Clans Unity Hospital and Nebraska Indian Community College. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and a small number work from home, while the typical commute is of moderate length.
Things to do. For time outdoors, Ponca State Park and Stone State Park are protected areas, each a longer drive away. McCook Lake is a lake within the same longer drive, and the John G. Neihardt State Historic Site is another protected area for a quieter outing.
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- 331households
- 11%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Thurston County had 3,331 jobs in 2025, 4.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 61°. About 36 inches of snow and 31 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Wakefield weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Thurston County
- UMO N HO N Nation Public SchsSchool district189FTE
- Winnebago Public Schools District 17School district155FTE
- Twelve Clans Unity HospitalGeneral hospital137FTE
- Nebraska Indian Community CollegeUniversity or college133
- Pender Community Hospital DistrictCritical access hospital131FTE
- Northeast Nebraska Community Action PartnershipIndividual and family social services, multi-purpose115
- Pender Public SchoolsSchool district70FTE
- Walthill Public SchoolsSchool district63FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 3 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 166 people in all across the county; Emerson has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Emerson’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Thurston County and the Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
Emerson home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Emerson$194,426
- Nebraska$278,299
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Emerson address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Emerson — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.