COOL TOOL ALERT - ZipSkinny.com

Posted by Jim Stroud

November 28, 2007

Hat tip to Howard Adamsky for sharing with me a cool tool - ZipSkinny.

Zipskinny was created as a Web development “hobby” project using Census 2000 data obtained from the Census website. By their own ommission, the information is not 100% accurate and users are encouraged to bounce the data found on this site with those found on the Census website. To quote, “While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information, errors and omissions can occur, and visitors are encouraged to use the actual Census site instead of this one for any serious research.” All that being said, its still a pretty sweet site, due mostly to its simplicity.

Here is the homepage of the site.

Simply add the zipcode of an area you are interested in learning more about. In this example, I used 90210.

And boom! You get all kinds of interesting data like: The Educational Achievement of the population in that zipcode, Household Income and Occupation of most of the people who live there. You also get a peek at how much money people are making there as well.

You can also see the demographic makeup of that area which is ideal for Diversity Recruiters trying to figure out the best places to advertise.

My favorite function with ZipSkinny so far is the “Top 100″ section. From there you can poll the top 100 USA cities for populations with the highest Professional/Graduate Degree, 4-year College, Unemployment and other criteria.

Keep this one in your bag of tricks…

-Jim