Data sources & methodology

Population, income, housing, education, employment, and commuting figures come from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. A 5-year estimate pools survey responses over a rolling 60-month window, which is what makes reliable numbers available even for small towns and ZIP codes.

The headline figures on each place use the latest available vintage, ACS 2019–2023 (the 2023 release). Deeper breakdowns (detailed age, education, housing, and commute variables) come from the same 2023 vintage.

Year-over-year trend charts and the population-change rankings draw on five consecutive ACS 5-year vintages — 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 — where each point is the 5-year estimate ending in that year. Because consecutive 5-year windows overlap, these series show direction over time rather than independent annual snapshots.

Place names, counties, states, and land area come from the US Census Bureau's 2024 Gazetteer files (public domain). City and town → county relationships use the Census 2020 place-by-county national reference file, reconciled against the 2024 geography so we never link to a county we don't carry.

ZIP-code pages are built on Census ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs). Each ZIP is mapped to the county (or counties) it falls in using the HUD-USPS ZIP Crosswalk, which we order by residential address share so the primary county is the one most of the ZIP's households live in.

This product uses the HUD User Data API but is not endorsed or certified by HUD User.

The Census Bureau suppresses estimates that fail reliability thresholds (often in very small places). Where a value is suppressed we simply omit it — it is never estimated, interpolated, or filled in. A missing figure means the source did not publish a reliable one.