Grays is home to working families in their thirties and forties, most of whom are paying off a mortgage. Six in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their late thirties. About a quarter of households are couples with children. Grays is where Thurrock lives, works and takes the children to school, and the borough's council offices are in the same town.
At the 2021 Census, which is the source for every population figure on this page, about 62% of Grays households owned their home. About 22% rented privately and about 16% rented from a council or housing association. Grays is mainly a town of owner-occupiers, with a private rental sector large enough that newcomers can rent first and decide later.
The typical resident is 37, and about 30% of people are aged 25 to 44. This is a young town that has mostly settled down, with fewer students than parents and fewer retired couples than either.
Gross household income in Grays averaged about £57,600 in the financial year to March 2023. That figure comes before tax and is modelled by the Office for National Statistics as an average across the wider neighbourhood areas, so it is three years out of date and higher than what anyone takes home. For a town where most of the earning involves a commute or a shift, it describes two salaries more often than one.
Families with children make up a large part of the town. About 23% of households are couples with children and about 12% are lone parents. With the two together, close to a third of front doors have school-age children or younger behind them.
At the other end, about 26% of households are one person living alone, and about 11% of all households are a single pensioner, who are part of that one-person group. Grays has room for the widow on the corner and the family of five next door, and in most streets it has both.
About 27% of residents hold a degree, about 22% have no formal qualifications, and only about 3% are full-time students. The town has had a school since William Palmer founded a charity school for poor children of the parish in 1706, and its modern sixth form college still carries his name. Grays has never been a university town, and its graduates are mostly the ones who came back.
At the 2021 Census, about 84% of Grays residents described their health as good or very good. Thurrock as a whole, according to the national public health indicators, has a preventable mortality rate similar to England's, and about 14% of adults in the borough smoke, which is also similar to the England average. On health, the borough is about as average as it gets.
The people of Grays are an ordinary mix of working families, first-time owners and long-standing neighbours. The town is neither wealthy nor struggling, and it gets by on two incomes and a reasonable mortgage.