Why is the place of work PUMA (pwpuma00) variable missing from the 2012 ACS 1-year file?

The place of work PUMA is supposed to be recorded for 2012, albeit with the new geographic codes that are based on the 2010 Census. (It says so here: https://usa.ipums.org/usa/revisions.s… And it is also in the Census Bureau’s PUMS files, at least according to the documentation.) But the Select Variables page says it’s not available for 2012, and sure enough when I downloaded the 2012 1-year file (plus earlier years), that variable was missing for all 2012 observations. Is this a mistake? The residence PUMA field, in contrast, is available for all years, as the POW State field. Thank you!!

PWPUMA00 was removed from the 2012 ACS file do to an inconsistency between the 2012 data format and data from previous years. IPUMS-USA is currently working on reintegrating the variable for 2012, but there is no official release date for the updated variable. In the mean time, I have attached a zipped fixed width data file with a dictionary text file that contains the PWPUMA00 (called PWPUMA10 in the dictionary file) values for the 2012 ACS sample from IPUMS-USA. You can merge this file onto your 2012 1-year ACS sample, using YEAR, SERIAL, and PERNUM.

I hope this helps.

pwpuma10.zip (7.07 MB)
pwpuma10_dict.txt (231 Bytes)