Puerto Rico and US Territories in Federal FIPS Data

The US FIPS geographic code system covers not just the 50 states but also the District of Columbia (FIPS 11) and five territories: Puerto Rico (72), Guam (66), the US Virgin Islands (78), American Samoa (60), and the Northern Mariana Islands (69). For data professionals, the most important of these is Puerto Rico, which appears in many federal datasets and has a full set of county-equivalent FIPS codes for its 78 municipios. Puerto Rico's FIPS page lists all 78.

Puerto Rico's municipios are classified as county-equivalents for federal statistical purposes. Each has a 5-digit FIPS code in the format 72XXX. They appear in Census ACS data (Puerto Rico has its own ACS program, the Puerto Rico Community Survey), BLS employment data, and some HUD programs. However, Puerto Rico is excluded from some federal datasets that apply only to the 50 states — for example, the USDA rural classification codes are not assigned to Puerto Rico municipios.

The other four territories (Guam, USVI, American Samoa, CNMI) have very limited representation in federal statistical datasets. They each have a 2-digit state-level FIPS code and some county-equivalent codes, but most federal agencies either don't publish territory data or publish it separately from the 50-state datasets. When building analyses that should cover "all US" geographies, always clarify whether territories are included — omitting Puerto Rico in particular can be a significant oversight for population-weighted analyses.

For the Census Bureau, Puerto Rico is covered comprehensively — the 2020 Decennial Census, ACS, and Population Estimates all include Puerto Rico with FIPS code 72. Other territories are counted in the Decennial but have limited ACS coverage. Our state FIPS codes reference includes all 57 entries including the five territories, and the search tool can look up any territory code.