Brooklyn, NY

ZIP code 11212 is assigned to Brooklyn, NY, and falls within Kings County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 87,946 people live inside it.

At 56,923 residents per square mile spread over 1.545 square miles, 11212 reads as a dense urban area. It is one of the more heavily populated postal codes in the country, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings are well below the national median. At $40,060, 11212 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 6% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 11212 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $549,400 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,231 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 86.2% of occupied homes are rented, a pattern typical of city centres, student areas and neighbourhoods with a lot of apartment stock.

The building stock is dominated by mid-sized apartment buildings, which account for 32.7% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1956, making the housing here mid-century.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 35.6 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.7 people, and 61.3% are family households.

Getting to work takes 49.4 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is public transit at 68.9% of workers, while 68.9% take public transit. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 11212 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 11212 offers a compact profile of Brooklyn: 87,946 residents, a median household income of $40,060, 16.4% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 13.8%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 11212 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Brooklyn may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.