Lajas Municipio area

Population and density of Lajas Municipio

The Census Bureau estimates that 22,784 people lived in Lajas Municipio on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,744 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #51 of 78 in Puerto Rico. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 23,335, the population has declined by 551 (−2.4%), compared with −3.1% for Puerto Rico as a whole.

With 60 square miles of land, that is 380 people per square mile (147 per km²), placing Lajas Municipio #426 nationally for density and #65 in Puerto Rico. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Puerto Rico median is 754. Put another way, there are about 1.7 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 Lajas Municipio

Puerto Rico has no incorporated places below the municipio: Lajas Municipio is itself the local government. The Census Bureau describes the settlements inside it, such as zonas urbanas and comunidades, as statistical places, and publishes no separate annual estimates for them.

Metropolitan area

Lajas Municipio is a central county of the Mayagüez, PR Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 6 county equivalents have 206,355 residents on 310.1 square miles of land; Lajas Municipio accounts for 19.4% of the land and 11% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #386 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #233 by population. It belongs to the Mayagüez-Aguadilla, PR Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

3 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Lajas Municipio; 1 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

006370064700667

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 Lajas Municipio

Lajas Municipio shares a land border with 4 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Cabo Rojo Municipio (70.4 mi²) and the smallest is Sabana Grande Municipio (36.3 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Lajas Municipio forms a block of 258.2 mi² of land, of which it holds 23.2%.

How big is Lajas Municipio compared with U.S. states?

Lajas Municipio has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 17 times as much. Puerto Rico’s county land could hold about 57 areas the size of Lajas Municipio.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 7.75 miles (12.5 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 Lajas Municipio?

Lajas Municipio has more land than 106 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 Lajas Municipio at #3,109 nationally by total area, 7 places closer to the top than its land rank. The water assigned to this geography moves it ahead of some county equivalents with more land.

Its water share is 40.7%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 39.5 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 Lajas Municipio 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.