Dursley is mostly homeowners in the middle of life, many of them with children and a mortgage. Seven in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. About one household in five is a couple with children. Students hardly feature, so the town runs on mortgages and school runs, and the student years happen somewhere else.
The 2021 census counted 8,223 people in Dursley in 3,575 households, and every population figure here comes from that census. About 69% of households own their home. About 14% rent privately and about 16% rent from the council or a housing association. Social tenants outnumber private renters here, which leaves anyone hoping to rent from a private landlord choosing from a short list.
The median resident is 43, and about 25% of residents are aged 25 to 44. Forty-three is about when people have a mortgage, a lawnmower and a child who needs a lift somewhere.
Household income in Dursley was about £54,000 a year before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That's a modelled figure from the Office for National Statistics, averaged across the two neighbourhood areas that cover the town, so it describes those areas as a whole and won't match any particular street. It's enough for a semi, a car each and a modest holiday. It's well short of what the bigger houses up the escarpment towards Uley cost.
About 10% of households are a single parent with children, and they live alongside every other kind of household on the same closes.
About 30% of Dursley households are one person living alone, and that includes the 13% who are a single pensioner living alone. About 21% are couples with dependent children. The town divides fairly evenly between young families and people whose children have grown up and left. Even The Towers, the Gothic house that once belonged to the Lister Petter estate and still looks down over the town, is now flats and a care home, which covers both ends of that range.
About 35% of adults hold a degree, about 15% have no formal qualifications, and about 1% of residents are full-time students. That's a broad spread: graduates who drive out to work, people who learned their trade in the town's factories, and almost nobody living on a student loan.
Dursley's population is middling. It's an ordinary, mostly home-owning town of families and older residents, with no extreme in either direction.