Each month the Census Counts team compiles Census-related news from a wide swath of national and regional media outlets to keep data equity stakeholders informed and engaged.
As always, you can find earlier clips here.
March 31, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
The Conversation | News Global population data is in crisis – here’s why that matters
For centuries, census and household surveys have been the backbone of population knowledge. But we’ve just returned from the UN’s statistical commission meetings in New York, where experts reported that something alarming is happening to population data systems globally. Census response rates are declining in many countries, resulting in large margins of error. The 2020 US census undercounted America’s Latino population by more than three times the rate of the 2010 census. In Paraguay, the latest census revealed a population one-fifth smaller than previously thought.
Andrew J Tatem, Jessica Espey | March 26, 2025
Newsweek | News Map Shows US Counties Suffering Biggest Population Decline
Counties in rural America suffered the largest population declines between 2023 and 2024, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows, as residents left for larger cities offering more job opportunities and higher wages. During the pandemic, being able to work remotely allowed many Americans living and working in U.S. metropolises to return to their hometowns or move to smaller, cheaper towns across the country. The end of the health emergency marked a reversal of this short-lived trend, as companies pushed for employees to return to the office. Once again, small towns across rural America are losing residents to larger cities with more lively job markets.
Giulia Carbonaro | March 26, 2025
NPR | News A new study quantifies how a citizenship question would likely hurt census accuracy
Adding a citizenship question to U.S. census forms — a change that many Republicans in Congress and President Trump have wanted — would likely undermine the accuracy of the country’s population counts, a new peer-reviewed study shows. The findings, published last week in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, build on earlier research by the Census Bureau and quantify longstanding concerns among opponents of the question, who fear it could derail the once-a-decade tally of U.S. residents that’s used to redistribute political representation and federal funding to communities.
Hansi Lo Wang | March 25, 2025
Federal News Network | News Census Bureau advisers are feeling like they don’t count
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has disbanded three Census Bureau external advisory groups. Gone are the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Committee on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations and the 2030 Census Advisory Committee. The community surrounding the Census Bureau is concerned. Mary Jo Mitchell, the director of government affairs at the Population Association of America, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss what this all means.
Tom Temin | March 25, 2025
MSNBC | News The Trump White House’s attack on official data is also an attack on democracy
Since the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, his administration has undertaken multiple actions undermining the integrity of census figures. First, the president issued an executive order revoking a Biden-era order affirming the long-standing precedent of counting noncitizens in the census. The new administration began taking down data from the bureau’s website. Earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded several outside advisory committees that provide technical expertise to the bureau. And the administration enacted hiring freezes that will halt census operations. The census isn’t the only data in the administration’s sights. Lutnick also suggested that the government may separate government spending from calculations of the gross domestic product (GDP).
Philip Rocco | March 25, 2025
States
Iowa
KCCI | News Ankeny now fifth-largest city in Iowa, special census finds
The special census was held in 2024. The U.S. Census Bureau says the city’s population is now 76,207, up more than 8,000 since the 2020 census. Interim City Manager Mike Schrock said Ankeny will get more than $1 million in additional Road Use Tax Funds each year because of the population increase. Those funds help the city pay for street maintenance, snow removal, and infrastructure improvements.
KCCI | March 28, 2025
Missouri
Lake Expo | News ‘Great Migration’ Census Data Reveals Missourians Are Moving To Smaller Cities & Lakes
The latest U.S. Census Data is out, and the numbers reveal some interesting population and migration trends within Missouri since the “Great Migration” triggered by Covid lockdowns in 2020. It’s no surprise. The Lou, while still Missouri’s largest city with a robust culture and entertainment scene, has faced population decline in recent years as the city’s schools struggle, crime rates climb, and political leaders offer out-of-touch solutions. But Missourians still appear to want to be near the Gateway City, just not in it. While St. Louis County and City saw population declines, surrounding counties of St. Charles, Warren, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Franklin all saw growth — some of them significantly.
Nathan Bechtold | March 28, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Census Bureau Releases State Government Finance Data
The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data tables for the Annual Survey of State Government Finances. These statistics provide a summary of the finances of state governments for fiscal year 2023. Tables include data for each state, along with detailed information on revenue sources, spending and debt. The data are used by federal, state and local governments and educational and research organizations for comparative studies and other activities like developing the government component of the gross domestic product.
Kristina Barrett | March 27, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release New Data on Public Employment and Payroll Now Available
The U.S. Census Bureau today released a new summary report and data tables for the 2024 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll (ASPEP). These statistics provide a comprehensive look at the employment of the nation’s state and local governments. The survey provides state and local government data on full- and part-time employment; full-time equivalent employment; and gross monthly payroll for March 2024 statistics by governmental function such as financial administration, other government administration, highways, and air transportation.
Jewel Jordan | March 27, 2025
March 24, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
FEDweek | News Staff Shortages Put Census Bureau Surveys at Risk, Report Says
The Bureau of the Census “struggles to recruit and retain” field representatives and suffers from high attrition in some areas, putting at risk the data collection for several of its most prominent surveys, and inspector general report has said. While the Bureau is best known for conducting the decennial censuses, the report notes, it conducts more than 130 surveys of households and businesses each year, including prominently the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey and the National Crime Victimization Survey. Attrition in staff dedicated to those three surveys has ranged from 12 to 27 percent annually over the last five years, however, with staffing gaps averaging 17 percent over that time in the ACS, 20 percent in the CPS and 19 percent in the NCVS.
FEDweek Staff | March 21, 2025
The Conversation | News 5 years on, true counts of COVID-19 deaths remain elusive − and research is hobbled by lack of data
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers struggled to grasp the rate of the virus’s spread and the number of related deaths. While hospitals tracked cases and deaths within their walls, the broader picture of mortality across communities remained frustratingly incomplete. Policymakers and researchers quickly discovered a troubling pattern: Many deaths linked to the virus were never officially counted. A study analyzing data from over 3,000 U.S. counties between March 2020 and August 2022 found nearly 163,000 excess deaths from natural causes that were missing from official mortality records. At the heart of the problem is the inefficiency of government policy, particularly outdated public health reporting systems and slow data modernization efforts that hinder timely decision-making. These long-standing policies, such as reliance on paper-based death certificates and disjointed state-level reporting, have failed to keep pace with real-time data needs during crises such as COVID-19.
Dylan Thomas Doyle | March 20, 2025
Pew Research Center | News How Americans feel about making English the official language of the U.S.
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order naming English the official language of the United States. The order revokes a Clinton-era order that required federal agencies to provide assistance in their programs for those with limited English proficiency. English is by far the most spoken language in the U.S. About three-quarters of those ages 5 and older (78%) speak only English at home. Another 14% speak a language other than English at home and indicate they speak English “very well,” according to Center analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey (ACS). And 9% of people 5 and older are not proficient in English.
Sahana Mukherjee, Mark Hugo Lopez | March 17, 2025
States
Alabama
AL.com | News For the first time in more than a decade, every county in Alabama’s largest metro is growing
Alabama’s largest metro’s name may have gotten smaller, but its population is getting bigger. The Birmingham Metropolitan Area, formerly Birmingham-Hoover, is growing. Everywhere. For the first time since 2008, all seven counties that make up the region gained population in 2024. Even Jefferson County, which has been losing thousands of people per year since 2020, grew. The most populous county in Alabama and home to Birmingham, Jefferson added just 660 people last year, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released last week.
Ramsey Archibald | March 19, 2025
Georgia
Urbanize Atlanta | News Census: Atlanta drops two spots on biggest metros list
The metro areas of both Miami and Washington D.C. have leapfrogged metro Atlanta in terms of overall population, bumping Georgia’s capital city back to No. 8 on the list of largest metros in the country, according to Vintage 2024 estimates of population totals and components of change recently published by the U.S. Census Bureau. Last year, the 2022-2023 version of the same report showed metro Atlanta had surpassed both Miami and Washington D.C.—after having overtaken metro Philadelphia the year prior—to become the sixth largest U.S. metro, and the biggest in the Southeast. That marked an impressing jump for Atlanta from being the ninth largest metro at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic—but alas, it was short-lived, per the new Census tabulations.
Josh Green | March 17, 2025
Texas
Black Chronicle | News Revised Census data: Texas counties reported massive growth over the year
Texas counties saw a massive influx of residents from July 2023 to 2024, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Four of the top 10 counties reporting the greatest numeric growth and the greatest percentage growth were in Texas, according to the data. Texas’ Harris County reported the greatest population growth last year in the U.S. While it reported gains, the top two most populous counties, Los Angeles and Cook, reported losses. While Harris remains the third most populous county in the country and most populous in Texas, its neighboring counties to the north and east, Liberty and Montgomery, reported significant growth, making the top ten nationwide. Kaufman County in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex reported the greatest percentage growth in Texas.
Black Chronicle News Service | March 21, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
Association for Computing Machinery | Report Evaluating the Impacts of Swapping on the US Decennial Census
To meet its dual burdens of providing useful statistics and ensuring privacy of individual respondents, the US Census Bureau has for decades introduced some form of “noise” into published statistics. Initially, they used a method known as “swapping” (1990-2010). In 2020, they switched to an algorithm called TopDown that ensures a form of Differential Privacy. While the TopDown algorithm has been made public, no implementation of swapping has been released and many details of the deployed swapping methodology deployed have been kept secret. Further, the Bureau has not published (even a synthetic) “original” dataset and its swapped version. It is therefore difficult to evaluate the effects of swapping, and to compare these effects to those of other privacy technologies. To address these difficulties we describe and implement a parameterized swapping algorithm based on Census publications, court documents, and informal interviews with Census employees.
María Ballesteros, Cynthia Dwork, Gary King, Conlan Olson, Manish Raghavan | March 25, 2025
March 17, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
Phoenix Independent | News Americans should be concerned: Trump’s trying to tamper with census count
Purging federal agencies of experts who work on some of our most complex public policy challenges has nothing to do with rooting out waste in government. It is about undermining democracy and building a new bureaucracy that serves the president’s partisan goals and wealthy supporters. It’s about slowly stripping away fair representation and replacing it with a system where powerful oligarchs call the shots regardless of whether they have been fairly elected.
Keshia Morris Desir | March 16, 2025
The New Yorker | News The Volunteer Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge
The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office. C.D.C. web pages on vaccines, H.I.V. prevention, and reproductive health went missing. Findings on bird-flu transmission vanished minutes after they appeared. The Census Bureau’s public repository went offline, then returned without certain directories of geographic information. The Department of Justice expunged the January 6th insurrection from its website, and whitehouse.gov took down its explainer page about the Constitution. On February 7th, Trump sacked the head of the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency that maintains the official texts of the nation’s laws, whose motto is “the written word endures.”
Julian Lucas | March 14, 2025
NPR | News Trump’s hiring freeze has halted local head counts and could threaten the U.S. census
Unless the White House changes its order, counting can’t start in White House, Tenn. It’s one of at least three communities in the South and Midwest with plans for a special local census this year that are now on ice because of President Trump’s hiring freeze on federal government employees. The Tennessee town — about an hour north of Nashville and named after what was once a white-painted inn — paid the U.S. Census Bureau more than $581,000 upfront last August for a local head count ahead of the next once-a-decade, national census in 2030. A more up-to-date tally could boost the town’s share of population-based funding from the state by as much as $875,000 a year, local officials estimate.
Hansi Lo Wang | March 13, 2025
Axios | News U.S. cities are growing again — thanks to immigration
America’s metros are growing faster than the country overall, driven largely by foreign immigration, per the U.S. Census Bureau. Why it matters: An exodus of city-dwellers rocked many U.S. metros during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some are now clawing back residents (and their productivity, creativity, tax dollars, etc.) Driving the news: The number of people living in U.S. metro areas rose by almost 3.2 million between 2023 and 2024, the Census Bureau said today — a gain of about 1.1%.
Alex Fitzpatrick | March 13, 2025
NBC News | News Immigration accounted for all U.S. population growth in 2022-23, first time since 1850
All U.S. population growth in 2022-23 happened because of immigration, not births — the first time that’s occurred since 1850, a migration think tank reported Wednesday. That immigration growth has happened as U.S. birth rates have fallen, the Migration Policy Institute reported as part of its latest edition of “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” The immigrant population grew by 1.6 million people between 2022 and 2023, reaching a record high of 47.8 million in 2023, according to the analysis. That’s about a 3.6% population increase, the largest annual growth since 2010, the institute stated in its report. However, the foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population is 14.3%. That puts it slightly below the 14.8% registered in 1890, MPI said.
Suzanne Gamboa | March 12, 2025
Inside Higher ED | News U.S. can improve data collection on AI/AN college students
Native American student enrollment has been on the decline for the past decade, dropping 40 percent between 2010 and 2021, a loss of tens of thousands of students. Of the 15.4 million undergraduate students enrolled in fall 2021, only 107,000 were American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Researchers argue that the small population is not as small as it seems, however, due in part to federal practices of collecting data on Native populations, according to a new report from the Brookings Institute, the Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Urban Institute.
Ashley Mowreader | March 12, 2025
States
Idaho
Idaho Statesman | News Idaho was once the fastest-growing state in the country. Is it still up there?
Idaho’s reign as the one of the fastest growing states in the country may be coming to a close — though it’s still growing fast and gaining on the tail of Nebraska. According to data released Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau, no Idaho counties or census-designated metro- or micro-areas cracked the top 10 for largest growth between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024. Instead, those lists are dominated by Texas, Florida and other sunbelt states. Nine of Idaho’s counties lost population in 2024, compared with only two in 2023, according to Jan Roeser, an economist with the Idaho Department of Labor. That’s a shift from the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Idaho outpaced all other states in 2021 and saw a population growth of nearly 3%, or just over 53,000 residents. Between 2023 and 2024, the most recent numbers available, Idaho’s rate of growth fell to 1.5%, which is still a sizeable number of nearly 30,500 residents.
Nick Rosenberger | March 17, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
National Urban League | Press Release Eliminating Census Advisory Committees Dims Transparency and Threatens Accurate 2030 Census Count
The National Urban League and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation , joint conveners of the Census Black Roundtable, are sounding an alarm. The Trump administration’s March 4th decision to eliminate all Census Advisory Committees during a crucial research and design period to improve the 2030 Census, is a significant step backwards for public trust and transparency. This move undermines assurances that the federal government will accurately count every person residing in the United States one time, once only, in the right place, regardless of their living conditions, socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity, age, legal status, sex, or gender preference.
National Urban League | March 17, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Data Collection Begins for 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey
The U.S. Census Bureau today began collecting data for the 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES). One of the Census Bureau’s newest surveys, the AIES is designed to integrate and replace seven existing business surveys into a streamlined single survey. The AIES provides key measures of economic activity, including the only comprehensive national and subnational data on business revenues, expenses and assets on an annual basis. AIES data can be used to track economic trends, assess industry performance, support policy development, and inform economic planning, resource allocation and market research.
Jewel Jordan | March 14, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Growth in Metro Areas Outpaced Nation
Population growth in U.S. metro areas as a whole was faster between 2023 and 2024 than in the previous year and outpaced that of the nation. Additionally, some metro areas that experienced population declines during the COVID-19 pandemic are now observing population gains, according to Vintage 2024 estimates of population totals and components of change released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. “Increasingly, population growth in metro areas is being shaped by international migration,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. “While births continue to contribute to overall growth, rising net international migration is offsetting the ongoing net domestic outmigration we see in many of these areas.”
Patricia Ramos | March 13, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Employment Status and Class of Worker Table Package Now Available
The U.S. Census Bureau today released new Employment Status and Class of Worker tables from the 2023 American Community Survey 1-year estimates. These data are supplemented with additional demographic and labor force content to provide cross tabulations on sex, race and ethnicity, level of education, place of birth, occupation, industry, and field of degree across class of worker categories. The tables provide data on workers that are in the private sector, government or self-employed (i.e., own business, professional practice or farm) for the civilian labor force (including both the employed and unemployed).
Mitchell A. Friedman | March 13, 2025
Research Gate | Report Sex and Gender Identity: Data Collection and Language Considerations for Human Research Ethics Committees and Researchers
Including women in research and collecting and disaggregating data on sex is an ethical imperative. However, increasingly gender identity is being prioritised over sex in data collection and language which has ethical implications. In this paper, the authors share their experiences as study participants; a health consumer advocate, patient research advisor, and lay researcher; and academic researchers of engaging with researchers, Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs), university ethics offices, and editors and reviewers of journals regarding data collection and communication on sex and gender identity. We argue that HRECs, researchers, and publishers must carefully consider the implications of omitting data collection on sex, mandatory and universalising gender identity questions and use of desexed language. We also propose that reduced data collection and disaggregation by sex, universal imposition of gender identity, and use of desexed language in research is decreasing data quality, reducing the willingness of some to participate in research and is culturally imperialistic.
Madelein Munzer, Nicole Jameson, Arianwen Harris, Ciara Curran | March 2025
March 10, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
NPR | News Postal workers conducting the census is part of a Trump pitch for taking over USPS
The Trump administration’s talk of transforming the U.S. Postal Service has ensnared another one of the country’s oldest institutions — the census. President Trump gave Lutnick “a whole 24 hours,” the commerce secretary said, to figure out how to solve the mail service’s longstanding financial problems. To “save us money,” the solution Lutnick pitched was to rely on mail carriers instead of hiring temporary census workers to help conduct the constitutionally required head count of the country’s residents once every 10 years.
Hansi Lo Wang | March 10, 2025
Bay Area Reporter | News Political Notes: Dismantling of US census panels raises doubts about federal LGBTQ data efforts
Just as President Donald Trump was preparing to deliver his address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, news broke that his Republican administration had disbanded several advisory panels to the U.S. Census Bureau. It raised alarms about plans for the 2030 decennial count of the nation’s population, and threw into doubt seeing questions about sexual orientation and gender identity be added to various census forms. Trump’s election last year had already quashed hopes of seeing the 2030 census form ask the SOGI questions. During his first term, Trump had upended efforts to see the 2020 census gather data about LGBTQ Americans.
Matthew S. Bajko | March 5, 2025
AP News | News Census Bureau under Trump cuts loose expert advisers who work for free
The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday disbanded outside advisory committees of demographers, statisticians and advocacy group leaders who provided technical expertise to the statistical agency. Members of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee and the 2030 Census Advisory Committee received notices Tuesday saying Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had determined the committees’ purposes “have been fulfilled,” according to emails shared with the Associated Press.
Mike Schneider | March 4, 2025
AP News | News Census Bureau under Trump seeks permission to delete questions about gender identity
The Census Bureau two weeks ago asked the Office of Management and Budget for permission to delete questions about gender identity from the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey. The agency said the Feb. 14 request was made to align with President Donald Trump’s order stripping federal money from programs that “promote gender ideology.” Issued on the first day of Trump’s second term in January, his order calls for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and through policies such as federal prison assignments. The position conflicts with what the American Medical Association and other mainstream medical groups say: that extensive scientific research suggests sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than by an either-or definition.
Mike Schneider | March 4, 2025
States
Georgia
Axios Atlanta | News Roughly 16% of Georgians speak a language other than English at home
Roughly 16% of Georgians speak a language other than English at home. Why it matters: President Trump signed an executive order earlier this month to make English the official language of the U.S. By the numbers: In 2023, Spanish was the most common language spoken at home in Georgia, with 8.7% of residents using it, per the most recent available U.S. Census Bureau data.
Ivana Saric, Thomas Wheatley | March 10, 2025
Blog Posts/Reports
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release New Modified Age and Race Data From the 2020 Census
The U.S. Census Bureau today released the 2020 Modified Age and Race Census (MARC) file. These tables provide data from the 2020 Census in race categories that align with those used in vital records and administrative data (which may not include “Some Other Race”) and are consistent with those used in the Population Estimates Program. Data are available for the nation, states and counties by single year of age, sex, race and Hispanic origin. The Census Bureau developed the MARC file by reassigning responses from the “Some Other Race” (SOR) category in the 2020 Census to the five race categories defined by the 1997 U.S. Office of Management and Budget revised standards for the collection, tabulation and presentation of federal data on race and ethnicity.
Public Information Office | March 6, 2025
The Leadership Conference | Press Release Civil Rights Coalition Denounces the Termination of Census Advisory Committees and the Inevitable Harm to 2030 Census Planning
Our coalition is extremely disappointed by the recent decision by the Department of Commerce to terminate the Census Bureau’s three advisory committees: the 2030 Census Advisory Committee; the Census Scientific Advisory Committee; and the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations. These advisory committees’ expert recommendations enable the Census Bureau to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its data collection operations in service of the fair and accurate count that all communities deserve. We strongly disagree with the Commerce Department’s stated rationale that the purposes of these advisory committees have been fulfilled.
Rachel Hooper | March 4, 2025
March 3, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
Reuters | News US Postal Service chief urges employees not to get distracted after Trump takeover rumors
Last week, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reported Trump was preparing to issue an executive order to fire the Postal Service board of governors. The White House denied the plan, but on Friday, Trump said he was considering merging the Postal Service with the U.S. Commerce Department, a move Democrats said would violate federal law.
David Shepardson | February 28, 2025
NBC News | News Trump signs an executive order making English the official U.S. language
President Donald Trump on Saturday signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the U.S., the first time in American history such a designation has been made. While English is the most widely used language in the country, U.S. residents communicate in more than 350 languages, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. More than three-quarters of Americans speak only English at home, according to the bureau.
Gabe Gutierrez and Rebecca Shabad | February 28, 2025
The Hill | News College student groups based on race, ethnicity could be in jeopardy under Trump
The future of college student groups based on race or ethnicity could be in jeopardy. As the Trump administration ramps up its efforts against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the Department of Education is signaling that it will seek to expand the Supreme Court’s ruling forbidding affirmative action in college admissions to all aspects of campus life, potentially going after organizations such as Black fraternities or honor societies, which are found at most schools.
Lexi Lonas Cochran | February 23, 2025
States
Colorado
The Colorado Sun | News Palestinian-American, Iranian-American state leaders want to check their own ethnic identity on Colorado forms
This year’s class of Colorado legislators includes two Democrats who fall into the ethnic group MENASA, which stands for Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian. They are Iman Jodeh, a state senator from Aurora who is Palestinian-American, and Yara Zokaie, a state representative from Fort Collins who is Iranian-American. When they fill out state forms asking their race or ethnicity, neither can find a box to check that represents them. They want to change that. So on Jan. 13, Jodeh introduced a bill that would create “a requirement that a government form that requests disclosure of the race or ethnicity of the individual completing the form include a space to indicate that the individual’s race or ethnicity is Middle Eastern, North African, or South Asian.”
Elaine Tassey | February 22, 2025
Texas
KLSA | News East Texas African Americans now able to dig deeper into their ancestry with the 1870 U.S. Census Project
There’s work in East Texas that’s helping many dig deeper into their African American roots. Because of a lack of record keeping during the slavery era, tracking African American ancestry is a challenge. But a report from 1870 is opening the door for those looking into their past. Before the emancipation of slaves, records of enslaved people were not officially accounted for. However, that changed with the 1870 U.S. Census. President of the East Texas Genealogical Society, Michele Bailey, tells us why this is important.
Noemy Sanchez | February 28, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
Princeton SPIA | Report Research Record: The Multiracial Complication: The 2020 Census and the Fictitious Multiracial Boom
The 2020 census reported a surprising uptick in the number of people who are multiracial in America: The percentage jumped from 3.4 percent the year before to 10.2 percent. That boom was just a “statistical illusion,” Paul Starr and Christina Pao show in this study. The U.S. Census Bureau “confounded ancestry with identity and mistakenly equated national origin with race,” Starr and Pao write, explaining that the Bureau used an algorithm to reclassify people as multiracial if they marked a single race but listed a country of origin that was not coded as belonging to that race.
Ambreen Ali | March 3, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Business Trends and Outlook Survey Data Release
The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data products from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), a survey that measures business conditions and projections on an ongoing basis. The BTOS includes data for multiunit/multilocation businesses. BTOS will continue to collect data complementary to key items found on other economic surveys, such as revenues, employees, hours, and inventories.
Julie Iriondo | February 27, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Census Bureau to Embargo Vintage 2024 Population Estimates
The U.S. Census Bureau will offer a two-day embargo period for qualified media to view the Vintage 2024 estimates of total population and components of change for U.S. counties and metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, and total population for Puerto Rico municipios and metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas. These estimates reflect population changes between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2024.
Patricia Ramos | February 25, 2025
