Worcester County area

Population and density of Worcester County

The Census Bureau estimates that 888,502 people lived in Worcester County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #67 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #2 of 14 in Massachusetts. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 862,093, the population has grown by 26,409 (+3.1%), compared with +1.7% for Massachusetts as a whole.

With 1,510.7 square miles of land, that is 588 people per square mile (227 per km²), placing Worcester County #299 nationally for density and #9 in Massachusetts. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Massachusetts median is 673. Put another way, there are about 1.1 acres of land per resident.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 population estimates. Estimates are revised each year and are not decennial census counts. Density divides the whole population by the whole county’s land area, so it describes an average, not how settlement is distributed within the county. Population sources and methods.

Cities and towns in Worcester County

Worcester County is divided into 60 cities and towns. In Massachusetts, county subdivisions are local governments, and together they cover all of the county’s land and residents.

The most populous is Worcester city, with 213,862 residents (24.1% of the county). The largest by land is Petersham town, at 54.2 mi², or 3.6% of the county’s land. Among those with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Bolton town grew fastest since then (+14.5%).

Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, counting only the part of each subdivision inside Worcester County. Land: 2026 Census Gazetteer. How communities are listed.

Metropolitan area

Worcester County is a central county of the Worcester, MA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Worcester County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the metro area has the same 1,510.7 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #217 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #69 by population. It belongs to the Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

87 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Worcester County; 85 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

010050101001031010370106801074010820108301092010940133101366013680142001430014340143601438014400145101452014530146201468014730147501501015030150401505015060150701510015150151601518015190152001522015230152401525015270152901531015320153401535015360153701540015410154201543015450155001560015610156201564015660156801569015700157101581015830158501588015900160201603016040160501606016070160801609016100161101612017400174501747017560175701772

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Lighter codes have less than half of their land in this county. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Worcester County

Worcester County shares a land border with 9 county equivalents, including 4 in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. It has more land than every one of them. The largest neighbor is Hillsborough County (876.5 mi²) and the smallest is Norfolk County (396.1 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Worcester County forms a block of 7,114.8 mi² of land, of which it holds 21.2%.

How big is Worcester County compared with U.S. states?

Worcester County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.5 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.3 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Massachusetts’s county land could hold about 5.2 areas the size of Worcester County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 38.9 miles (62.6 km) on each side. Real county shapes are rarely square, so this is a scale reference rather than a width or driving distance.

State figures are the sums of each state’s county-equivalent land measurements in the same Census release, so states and counties are compared on the same basis. Published state totals can differ slightly because of rounding. Compare all states · Counties bigger than entire states.

What stands out about Worcester County?

Worcester County has more land than 2,828 of the other 3,221 county equivalents in the dataset.

A median is the middle county-equivalent measurement, not the average of the largest and smallest. All three bars use the same linear scale. Very small areas may appear as a thin sliver; the labels retain their values.

Does including water change its rank?

Using land plus water places Worcester County at #426 nationally by total area, 32 places farther from the top than its land rank. Other county equivalents gain more area when their water measurements are included.

Its water share is 4.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 3.2 percentage points higher. This describes the statistical geography’s land/water mix, not flood exposure or developable land.

Closest positions in the national land ranking

These entries sit immediately beside Worcester County in the national ranking. They can be in different states and are not necessarily geographic neighbors.

Calculated from the same Census release as the area table. Total-area order uses original ALAND + AWATER; water shares and chart labels use published square miles. Calculation details.