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.
October 27, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
NPR | News People are having fewer kids. Their choice is transforming the world’s economy
Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR’s series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing the World explores the causes and implications of this trend. Worldwide, the number of children born to the average family has dropped by more than half since the 1970s, according to the latest United Nations data. Economists say having fewer children is the norm for many families, especially in relatively prosperous countries like the U.S. The trend is leading to populations that are dramatically older, and beginning to shrink, in many of the world’s biggest economies.
Brian Mann, Sarah McCammon | October 27, 2025
The 74 | News Federal Data Is the Basis for Everything We Know About Schools. It Must Be Saved
Incomplete data has real consequences. Without accurate enrollment and demographic information, states and the federal government don’t know which schools need additional funding to serve more students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. If budget cuts come, and principals and district leaders lack evidence for cost-effectiveness, it will be more difficult to continue allocating scarce resources. State legislators will have less confidence in understanding how districts and schools are pivoting to serve new student needs, such as AI literacy or work-based learning that prepares young people for a rapidly changing economy. And, as a result of these cascading failures, students will miss out on learning opportunities that enable them to achieve their highest potential.
Rebecca Sibilia & Katie Roy | October 23, 2025
Niskanen Center | News New census data: A true picture of America’s housing stock
The Census Bureau began releasing data from the program, known as the Address Count Listing Files, in January 2023. Data for 2020, 2023, 2024, and 2025 are now available. The program remained mostly under the radar until a recent demo video brought it to wider attention, largely because its creators did not realize the immense appetite for this data beyond local governments preparing for the decennial census. These files, which the bureau is now publishing every six months, are derived from the bureau’s Master Address File (MAF), the comprehensive, confidential list of every housing unit in the country. This public data offers a near-real-time snapshot of housing units down to the census block level, creating precise housing unit totals for any jurisdiction — from a sub-county municipality to an entire state.
Alex Armlovich | October 23, 2025
The Economist | News Why are American women leaving the labour force?
For almost 80 years, since America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics began splitting data by gender, at least one story has been true: women have been gaining on men. In 1948 just 32% of women were employed or seeking work, against 87% of their male peers. By the end of the 1990s, some 60% of women were in the workforce, alongside 75% of men. During the 2000s and 2010s, the gap continued to shrink, albeit because male employment was falling. Then the covid-19 pandemic pushed workers out—but women recovered faster, narrowing the gap between the sexes to just 10.1 percentage points by early 2025, the smallest on record. Now something has changed. Although men’s participation is steady, women are leaving the workforce.
The Economist | October 21, 2025
MSNBC | News The Trump administration is disappearing data — to our detriment
Among the federal employees sent home during the ongoing government shutdown was the entire team at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that produces inflation estimates. Those estimates, in turn, drive the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security, which sets the benefit rates for the coming year. The Trump administration, perhaps in acknowledgment of the potential backlash of leaving more than 70 million Social Security recipients in limbo, announced the BLS team will return to produce its report on Friday, Oct. 24, so that the 2026 cost-of-living increase can be announced the same day.
Max Stier | October 20, 2025
States
California
Office of the Attorney General of California | Press Release Attorney General Bonta Opposes Proposal to Remove Reporting Requirements that Help Shine Light on Race-Based Disparities in Students Identified for Special Education
California Attorney General Rob Bonta today co-led a coalition of 16 attorneys general in filing a comment letter opposing the Trump Administration’s proposal to remove certain reporting requirements that help the U.S. Department of Education determine whether local education agencies have significant disparities in representation in special education programming for children with disabilities based on race. Data and research have shown for decades that students are disproportionately identified for special education and related services, and disproportionately placed in segregated, restrictive special education settings, based on race and ethnicity. As such, it is necessary for the Department to evaluate whether states are using approaches that accurately identify and address this imbalance, rather than obscure it. California has a longstanding commitment to gathering and reporting detailed information on student’s educational experiences to promote equitable access to education for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, and disability status.
Rob Bonta | October 21, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
WSJ | Opinion OMB Can Stop Biden’s Race Counting
President Trump has issued at least three executive orders aimed at stopping racial discrimination, including affirmative action and disparate-impact analysis. The orders fulfill the constitutional requirement of equal protection of the laws, forbidding government from treating people differently based on race.
Note: This article contains factual errors about the revised SPD15 standards.
John Early | October 23, 2025
Migration Policy Institute | Press Release As the U.S. Unauthorized Population Expands, It Is Also Diversifying, New Fact Sheet Shows
Even as the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States has risen significantly after a decade of stagnation, it is becoming significantly more diversified in terms of origins, socio-economic and labor market characteristics, family composition and places of settlement, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) fact sheet shows. The unauthorized immigrant population has grown sharply, from 10.7 million in 2019 to 13.7 million as of mid-2023, MPI analysts find. Still, even as the unauthorized immigrant population has experienced the sharpest growth since the early 2000s, a full 80 percent have at least five years of U.S. residence—with 45 percent living 20 or more years in the United States.
MPI | October 21, 2025
October 20, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
Florida Politics | News Ashley Moody cosponsors proposed measure that stems illegal resident impact on congressional districts
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody is throwing her support behind a proposed measure designed to ensure only legal residents are counted when it comes to formulating congressional districts. Moody announced she is cosponsoring the Equal Representation Act, which was drafted to ensure that residents who are legally in the U.S. are the only people factored into the count that establishes the Electoral College map. That’s also the process that determines Congressional districts and the map that determines presidential elections. In a news release, Moody said presently, the process counts migrants who are illegally in the U.S. “as a perverse incentive for open borders to boost the relative political power of the states and voters that court it.”
Drew Dixon | October 19. 2025
NPR | News Trump administration says most federal layoffs aren’t blocked by court order
The Trump administration says it has paused work on only a small share of the roughly 4,000 mass layoffs announced since Oct. 1, in order to comply with a court order. That includes more than 400 Department of Housing and Urban Development employees, 465 Education Department staff and 102 people with the Census Bureau, according to court filings released Friday. Friday’s court filing came amid a legal fight between the administration and two federal employee unions — the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — which sued to block what they call “politically driven RIFs,” or reductions in force.
Andrea Hsu, Stephen Fowler | October 17, 2025
States
Kansas
Axios Kansas City | News Housing and population growth in Kansas City outpace the nation
Housing units in the Kansas City metro continue trending upward, outpacing the area’s strong population growth. The big picture: More homes than people have been added in the U.S. over the last decade, but affordability remains a huge roadblock for many would-be homebuyers. Zoom in: The number of housing units in the Kansas City metro increased by 10.6% between 2014 and 2024, while the population grew by 8.9%, per U.S. Census Bureau data. Zoom out: Housing units across the nation grew by 9.5% while the population grew by 6.7%. Yes, but: That only tells part of the story; just because housing exists doesn’t mean it’s affordable.
Alex Fitzpatrick, Travis Meier | October 15, 2025
Louisiana
NOLA.com | News The U.S. Supreme Court hears Louisiana’s Voting Rights Act Case today. Here’s what to know.
On the surface, the case is about the voting maps Louisiana created for the U.S. House of Representatives. After the 2020 Census, the Louisiana passed a legislative map that kept basically the same configuration as before, with one majority-Black district out of six. But a group of Black voters sued, arguing that the Census showed roughly a third of voters are Black, so the Legislature should have drawn a map with two majority-Black districts. While the case is specifically about Louisiana’s maps, a ruling could have much broader implications. Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga is arguing to the court that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which governs how race factors into redistricting, violates the Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal treatment regardless of race. The state is arguing the current system wrongly assumes Black voters all think and vote alike and forces government to favor the interests of some groups over others.
Matthew Albright | October 15, 2025
Washington
The Seattle Medium | News Delay In Washington State Employment Data Release Due To Federal Government Shutdown
The Washington State Employment Security Department has announced that the publication of vital employment data will be postponed until the federal government reopens, as confirmed earlier this week. This decision affects the agency’s regular monthly employment report for September 2025, which was slated for release on October 15. However, the ongoing federal shutdown, which commenced on October 1, has created significant barriers to data access. The state-level employment reports depend heavily on information from federal agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and the Department of Labor. These agencies are currently unable to release the necessary labor market and employment statistics, resulting in the delay.
Staff | October 17, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
RWJF | Blog To Protect Democracy, We Must Protect Public Health Data
Preserving public health data is vital to our democracy. Data tell the story of who we are as a nation. It can inform policies that meet community needs, determine how government spends money, and make it possible to hold elected leaders accountable for protecting our wellbeing. For people to count, they must be counted. That’s why the Census and Data Equity team at The Leadership Conference Education Fund advocates for data collection that accurately reflects all communities—and why I find it chilling that we are witnessing the deletion and alteration of websites with crucial health data by the current administration.
Meeta Anand | October 15, 2025
October 14, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
Reuters | News US government shutdown: How it affects key economic data publishing
The U.S. government shut down much of its operations on October 1 after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach an agreement to extend funding past the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30. The closure has shut off the flow of key economic data at a moment of uncertainty among policymakers and investors about the health of the U.S. job market, the trajectory of inflation and the strength of consumer spending and business investment.The federal agencies responsible for indicators of U.S. economic activity, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, have suspended the collection and distribution of nearly all data for the duration the shutdown, although the BLS on Friday said it would publish the Consumer Price Index for September on October 24. The report had been originally scheduled for October 15.
Reuters | October 13, 2025
AP News | News Young Republicans challenge 2020 census results as part of wider GOP attack on head count
Two young Republican groups have challenged statistical methods used to produce the results of the 2020 census, four years after the numbers were released, as the GOP continues its growing attack on the numbers from the last U.S. head count. The legal challenge, filed in a Florida federal court, targets the U.S. population figures that determine how many congressional seats each state gets. It comes as President Donald Trump has been pressuring Republican-led state legislatures to redraw their congressional districts to benefit the GOP ahead of next year’s elections.
Mike Schneider | October 10, 2025
Axios | News Housing is outpacing population growth, but there’s a catch
Nationwide housing growth outpaced population gains over the last decade, yet affordability remains a huge roadblock for many would-be homebuyers. Why it matters: Housing is emerging as a key topic politically, especially for some Democrats worried about their long-term electoral prospects. If people keep leaving blue states in favor of red states with cheaper housing and other necessities, the thinking goes, Democrats could find themselves in deep mathematical trouble in future elections based on updated census results. By the numbers: The number of housing units across the U.S. increased by 9.5% between 2014 and 2024, while the population grew by 6.7%, per U.S. Census Bureau data.
Alex Fitzpatrick | October 9, 2025
The Hill | News Divorce rates ‘significantly higher’ in these states, Census Bureau says
People are getting married older. Millennials don’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Maybe it’s too expensive to get married. Maybe it’s too expensive to get divorced. Whatever the reason may be, divorce is growing less and less common. Between 2012 and 2022, the divorce rate declined 28%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. However, there are 14 states bucking the trend, where the divorce rate is still “significantly higher” than the national average. To determine this, the Census Bureau looked at the results of its annual demographics survey, the American Community Survey, in 2022. It found the national divorce rate was 7.1 new divorces for every 1,000 women.
Alix Matrichoux | October 8, 2025
The Hill | News 1 in 5 people in US is Latino for first time in history: Analysis
For the first time in American history, one in five people living in the U.S. identify as Latino, according to a new study by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and California Lutheran University. The Tuesday study used data from the 2024 U.S. Census Bureau. Released in June, the data showed an increase of 2 million persons compared to population estimates from 2023. Altogether, researchers believe that the Latino population in the U.S. is over 68 million. In 1988, David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine at UCLA and co-author of the report, said in UCLA’s statement that the Latino population would reach 58.8 million by 2024, “but obviously we were too conservative.”
Ryan Mancini | October 7, 2025
Urban Institute | News Stronger Data Privacy Protections Are Needed to Protect People with Disabilities
Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a partnership to create a “real-world data platform” to better understand the potential “root causes of autism.” They said the platform would use claims data, electronic medical records, and data from wearable devices. The project has been framed as novel scientific research, but disability advocates and researchers have raised concern about data privacy and the potential misuses of federal medical services and insurance data for disabled people’s treatment. And although the Department of Health and Human Services’ announcement mentions starting with CMS data use agreements and following data privacy laws, various disability advocacy groups have raised concerns about needing strong guardrails on sharing data about such specific conditions.
Susan J. Popkin, Harley Webley | October 6, 2025
States
California
The Bay Area Reporter | News Sparse federal data on LGBTQs is threatened by recent Trump executive orders
Recent executive moves by President Donald Trump are making data collection about sexual orientation and gender identity at the national level more difficult. This could have serious implications from health care to violence prevention to policy and law, advocates noted. It also affects economic indicators, as there aren’t as many reports that study those effects on LGBTQ people. “It’s not like we have a long history of doing this research,” Ilan Meyer, Ph.D., a distinguished senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute, said in an interview. Meyer declined to disclose his own sexual orientation.
John Ferrannini | October 8, 2025
Florida
Florida Policy Institute | News Challenges Ahead: What Census Data Reveals about the Wealth Gap and Uninsured Rate as Florida Braces for H.R. 1
On September 9, 2025, the Census Bureau released reports on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage changes in the United States between 2023 and 2024. Per the Census Bureau’s findings, while the nation’s median household income remained statistically flat in 2024, inequality persists. Just looking at 2024, there is still a gap between wealthy and low- to moderate-income households. Additionally, “post-tax” measures confirm that taxes paid, tax credits, and noncash public assistance reduce income disparities; however, they do not eliminate them. The Census Bureau’s findings also show that Florida’s uninsured rates are worsening, especially for children, and remain well above national averages.
FPI Staff | October 8, 2025
Iowa
The Gazette | News Government Notes: Tiffin pauses special census due to government shutdown
The special census being conducted in Tiffin has been put on hold as a result of the federal government shutdown. The city asked residents to wait to fill out the online census form because parts of the U.S. Census Bureau website were down. The official date of the special census is Oct. 15, though residents have been receiving letters from the U.S. Census Bureau since Sept. 3, inviting them to complete a special census online questionnaire. The city is conducting a special census this year with the hope that growth of the Johnson County city will qualify it for additional state and federal funding.
Massachusetts
CommonWealth Beacon | News Mass. begins 2030 Census prep amid national redistricting fights
Door-knockers will not start counting the number of Americans for another four-plus years, but amid an intense redistricting fight in other parts of the country, the 2030 Census in Massachusetts is already in the spotlight. The Census process has always carried massive political stakes, but this cycle has become more fraught after Texas Republicans reshaped their political districts in August to add House seats to their majority. Because the Census determines the number of seats each state is allotted in Congress – as well as federal funding for certain programs – officials in Massachusetts are under more pressure this cycle to make sure that every resident is counted. “This work never really stops,” Sen. William Brownsberger, who leads the Senate Committee on the Census, said in an interview.
Chris Lisinski | October 8, 2025
Michigan
Click-on Detroit | News Grim reality: More than half of Detroit children are now living in poverty, Census Bureau data shows
New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal a grim reality for many Detroit families: more than half of all children in the city are now living below the poverty line. According to data released in September, 51% of children in Detroit lived in poverty in 2024, a rate that is three times the national average. The city’s overall poverty rate climbed to 34%, making Detroit the poorest major city in the nation with a population of more than 500,000.
Ty Steele | October 6, 2025
October 6, 2025 Census Coalition Clips
National
NPR | News A major census test begins recruiting workers as some warn about delays
The next U.S. census isn’t scheduled to be taken until 2030, but the federal government says help is wanted well before then in six states for the national head count’s major field test. The census test is supposed to help the bureau develop better ways of getting complete and accurate population counts and demographic data, especially of historically undercounted populations such as children under the age of 5, people of color and renters. While the ongoing federal shutdown has put a halt to work on new government statistics, test preparations have continued because Commerce Department officials supervising the bureau have deemed it a “mission critical priority” ahead of the constitutionally required tally in 2030.
Hansi Lo Wang | October 6, 2025
Crooked Media | News What Happens When We Can’t Rely On Federal Data
Because of the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release its monthly unemployment and jobs survey today. But that’s probably not a big deal to President Donald Trump, who has apparently decided that the best statistics are the ones that either say what he wants to hear, or are simply never heard at all. And this started long before the shutdown. America has been a world leader at collecting data on everything from the number of bison living in Plains states to the divorce rate – but our data supremacy might be coming to an end. And that’s really, really bad, for reasons we might not even know yet. So to find out more about the stats we’re losing, and what else we’re losing in the process, we spoke to Denice Ross.
Crooked Media | October 2, 2025
Equitable Growth | News Federal data is under attack, but data users can work together to preserve and democratize it
Staffing shortages, political interference, and a federal government shutdown are all disrupting the routine operations of the nonpartisan federal statistical agencies that reliably gather facts and publish data about the state of the U.S. economy and U.S. labor market. Many in private industry, state and local governments, think tanks, associations, and academics alike are stepping up to support and defend the integrity and importance of federal data. Simultaneously, many people and organizations can and should engage in building data collaborations and datasets that, over time, could lead to even better economic data.
Peter Norlander | October 1, 2025
Axios | News The shutdown is cutting off data you paid for
Among the casualties of the current government shutdown: Simple access to some key taxpayer-funded government data. Why it matters: You may not need to look up where America’s oldest residents live or how much federal revenue K-12 schools get. But it’s your right as an American taxpayer to get those numbers, if you want them. After all, you paid to collect them.
Alex Fitzpatrick | October 1, 2025
Governing.com | News Local Governments Could Be Flying Blind as Federal Data Disappears
State and local governments depend on federal data for everything from community planning to disaster response. What happens if it goes away? Following a series of announcements about new federal priorities, the Trump administration removed data tools crucial to state and local governments. Some have been restored, but questions remain about the long-term availability of federal data once taken for granted. Local governments don’t have the ability to duplicate most of the data sets they rely on to plan for the future and create new policy.
Carl Smith | August 21, 2025
States
Indiana
Indy Star | News Westfield special census delayed once again due to federal government
Westfield’s special census has once again been delayed due to the federal government — this time because of the government shutdown. “While we wait for updates from the U.S. Census Bureau, we want to thank our residents who have already participated,” reads a statement from the city. “The census will resume once the shutdown ends, and we’ll share information as soon as we have it.”
Jake Allen | October 6, 2025
Blog Posts and Reports
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Census Bureau Jobs Available for the 2026 Census Test
The U.S. Census Bureau has launched an effort to hire approximately 1,500 temporary field workers to support operations across six test sites for the 2026 Census Test. This effort is based on a temporary hiring waiver granted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The 2026 Census Test is the Census Bureau’s first major opportunity to test new and enhanced activities in preparation for achieving a complete and accurate count in the 2030 Census. The Census Bureau is recruiting in the six site locations selected for the 2026 Census Test. Available positions include census takers, outreach assistants, field supervisors, and trainers.
Public Information Office | October 6, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release Census Bureau Releases Intercensal Estimates by Demographic Characteristics: 2010-2020
The U.S. Census Bureau today released the 2010-2020 Intercensal Estimates by demographic characteristics. Intercensal estimates are produced once every 10 years after the decennial census. They revise the prior decade’s estimates to align with the most current census and are considered the preferred series of data for that decade.
Kristina Barrett | September 30, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau | Press Release U.S. Census Bureau Celebrates 14th Annual Manufacturing Day
The U.S. Census Bureau this week celebrated the manufacturing sector’s importance and vast contribution to the nation’s economy. Observed annually on the first Friday in October, Manufacturing Day showcases the benefits and potential of modern manufacturing, spurring interest in manufacturing careers. The Census Bureau has a Manufacturing Week homepage with valuable manufacturing statistics and data products.
Jewel Jordan | September 30, 2025
