973 Area Code: Newark, New Jersey

Northern New Jersey is served by the 973 area code, with Newark as its primary city. Newark sits at the head of Newark Bay, organized around Port Newark and the surrounding container terminals, Newark Liberty International Airport, and a downtown that has reshaped itself substantially over the past two decades alongside the surrounding higher-education campuses (Rutgers-Newark, NJIT, Seton Hall's law school). The local working economy reflects the port, the airport, healthcare, insurance (Prudential's headquarters), and a long-running role as the largest city in the state. The 973 footprint extends through Paterson, Clifton, Passaic, the Oranges, and the surrounding cluster of northern New Jersey cities.

In records the directory has compiled for 973 numbers, other New Jersey cities — Cherry Hill, Edison, Elizabeth, and Jersey City — recur frequently. None of those are inside the 973 footprint. The pattern reflects standard public-record dynamics, with phone numbers porting across New Jersey and addresses linked across multiple cities. The directory currently documents 690 distinct prefixes within 973 in detail, a working subset of the prefix population the code carries.

Newark's home values come in close to the US median, with median household income running well below the national figure — a reading shaped heavily by the city's long industrial transition and a wide income distribution. The city's median age sits a few years under the US reading, and population places Newark as the largest city in New Jersey, the anchor of a metropolitan area that integrates closely with New York City to the east.