Data Services Knowledge Base

Zip code data for the ACS will not be made available until late 2012 or early 2013.

Zip codes are not census geography so they are always one of the last products that the Census Bureau produces. Another reason for the delay is that zip codes are built from underlying census geographies like census blocks and tracts. New census tract boundaries will not be available until 2011.

Census tract data will be available in late 2010 - ACS 2005-2009, which will be based on Census 2000 boundaries. The following year, the census tract file (ACS 2006-2010) will be based on definitions based on the 2010 Census.

Zip code characteristics are a really popular item. No one wants to be reporting data from 2000. There is a solution for this. Once the new ACS data are released at the census tract level, you can create quasi-characteristics using the Mable GeoCorr crosswalk to weight the contribution of census tracts to a zip code.

Here are instructions for using the 2006-2010 ACS data.

http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/census/Features/tract2zip/index.html