ZIP Codes.com

With its FREE zip code finder, ZipCodes.com has many ways of finding information.

Use it to: look up ZIP+4 of any address in the U.S.; find all the Zip Codes in a given radius; find the distance between any two Zip Codes (line of sight + driving distance/directions).

Census Bureau released 2012 ZIP Code Business Patterns statistics

ZIP Code Business Patterns provides the total number of establishments, employees, and payroll by 5-digit ZIP Code, and the total number of establishments by industry within employment-size class categories.

Please visit the U.S. Census Bureau’s website to access the data.

ZIP Code Business Patterns defines employment as all full- and part-time employees who were on the payroll during the pay period that includes March 12. Data sources for ZBP are Census Bureau reports and administrative records from other federal agencies.

For assistance, call the ZBP staff at 301-763-2580.

The Munson-Nixon Line: Up Close on Baseball’s Borders

From the New York Times:

Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated has called the line running through Connecticut that separates Yankee fans and Red Sox fans the Munson-Nixon line. Mr. Rushin came up with the name — in honor of the late Yankee catcher Thurman Munson and the retired Red Sox right fielder Trot Nixon — in 2003, and he had to guess where the line ran: “north of New Haven but south of Hartford, running the breadth of central Connecticut.”

We don’t have to guess anymore.

Fans may not list which team they favor on the census, but millions of them do make their preferences public on Facebook. Using aggregated data provided by the company, the New York Times was able to create an unprecedented look at the geography of baseball fandom, going down not only to the county level, as Facebook did in a nationwide map it released a few weeks ago, but also to ZIP codes. We can now clearly see that both Hartford and New Haven are in fact Yankee outposts. We can also determine the precise Chicago neighborhoods where White Sox jerseys stop being welcome and the central California town where the Dodgers cede fan favorite status to the Giants.

HUD USPS ZIP Code Crosswalk Files

One of the many challenges that social science researchers and practitioners face is the difficulty of relating United States Postal Service (USPS) ZIP codes to Census Bureau geographies. There are valuable data available only at the ZIP code level that, when combined with demographic data tabulated at various Census geography levels, could open up new avenues of exploration.

While some acceptable methods of combining ZIP codes and Census geography exist, they have limitations. To provide additional avenues for merging these data, PD&R has released the HUD-USPS Crosswalk Files. These unique files are derived from data in the quarterly USPS Vacancy Data. They originate directly from the USPS; are updated quarterly, making them highly responsive to changes in ZIP code configurations; and reflect the locations of both business and residential addresses. The latter feature is of particular interest to housing researchers because many of the phenomena that they study are based on housing unit or address. By using an allocation method based on residential addresses rather than by area or by population, analysts can take into account not only the spatial distribution of population, but also the spatial distribution of residences. This enables a slightly more nuanced approach to allocating data between disparate geographies.

More HERE.

ZIP Code Definitions of New York City Neighborhoods

Knowing well that ZIP Codes are NOT geographic markers, nevertheless, here's a list of NYC neighborhoods by ZIP Code, from the NYS Department of Health.

Not all ZIP code lists by county are alike

I looked for a couple websites that would give out ZIP codes by county. The first two I found were GetZIPS.com and MelissaData.com.

I tend to trust Melissa more.

Looking for ZIP Code 12309, primarily a ZIP Code in Schenectady, I wanted to see if the small portion in Albany County in that ZIP would show up. Yes in Melissa;, no in GetZIPS.

Remember that ZIP Codes are no respecter of county boundaries.

Interesting ZIP code resource

Zipskinny, unfortunately, is based on Census 2000 data, not 2010...yet.

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.

ZIPskinny

Found one of those data generating databases ZIPskinny. It is, from a cursory glance, bogus. Here are some results:
The Top 100 ZIP Codes lists suggests that there are 69 places where the percentage of the population over the age of 15 which is currently married is 100%, that there are over 100 places with 100% high school graduates, 12 with 100% 4-year college graduates, 7 with post-grad degrees, and that there are places with median ages of 12 and 85. So, if someone suggests this site to you, look elsewhere.

ZIP Code to MSA name

This is an Excel file from the U.S. Department Of Labor, listing all of the ZIP codes and indicating what MSA, if any, it's located in. Quite good.


EDIT: Above is not working so well, but as of 8/7/09, this is.