Monday, July 21, 2008

ZIP Code to MSA

There's bad news and then there's good news.

The bad news is that the US Department of Labor link noted here no longer works. I discovered this when I was contacted by a Ph.D. student named Alan who came across the post.

I called the DOL to ask what was up. The person there, clearly reading a script, referred me to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That person, confused by why DOL referred me there, passed me on to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Census guy told me about this great program called the State Data Centers. Specifically he mentioned one in Missouri that has a cool database:

1. Click on the link on the right of above page to GEOCORR 2K.
2. Pick a state or states. (The Census guy I called tried NY.)
3. Select one or more SOURCE codes. (He picked the MSA). Select one or more TARGET codes. (He picked 5-digit ZIP, which are actually ZCTAs).
4. You need to pick a weighed variable. (He picked as 2000 Pop census). He picked CSV, and Codes and Names in both category.
5. Then run it. Then download it.

(I haven't tested it, but Alan probably wanted to flip what I got by putting ZIP on SOURCE and MSA as TARGET, which may be more like his goal.)

Still, since GEO IN GEO doesn't work on the American FactFinder for this purpose - for good reason - I really liked this solution. Not so incidentally, one can use this tool for other calculations as well, down to the block level.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

I put this data into a simple website that maps ZIP to MSA and MSA to ZIP. www.msa-zip.com Maybe not as detailed as the government site, but easier if you just need to do a simple search.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

This link is clickable www.msa-zip.com

Wah Knot? said...

thank you both for this find! i can't believe this information was so hard to come by.

Rebecca said...

This was so helpful! I echo wha knot?'s comment about this information being hard to come by. I thought it would be impossible to get without paying for geo-coding software. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for this! It's certainly saved me hours and hours of research.

FC said...

Thank you! This was SO helpful!

Anonymous said...

VMA
What happened to the www.msa-zip.com?
Not sure if its my computer settings but the site is not working.
MUst have been good while it lasted from all the positive feedback...

Roger Owen Green said...

VMA- www.msa-zip.com doesn't work anymore, but did you try the Missouri SDC site?

Charlie J said...

I'm the guy who put the MSA-ZIP.com site up. I didn't realize it wasn't working. Will identify the problem and get it back up ASAP. Seems it has been down for quite a while...

Tink said...

I loved the msa-zip.com site! I was able to use it for a project last month, but now it appears to have disappeared.

Charlie? Will you be making this available again?

Thanks,
Debbie

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Missouri MARBLE/Geocorr site tip -- it had exactly what i needed for my project! Mike Y.

Christian Joy said...

As of March 1, 2013 the link is working excellently! We almost purchased a DB for this. Awesome entry!