New and Improved Annual Business Reports by the Census Bureau. Kalel Carkeek, Impact Investing Intern, American University.

 The Census Bureau

The Census Bureau’s purpose is to collect data about people and the economy.  Most people know it as that survey in the mail every 10 years that gets the population count. The survey is used to determine the appropriate number of congressional seats for each state. It is also used for school district assignments and legislature districts.  In addition, it is used to “distribute $675 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year” (Census). This money goes to education, transportation, public health, neighborhood, improvements and much, much more.

Problems With Census

The Census taken every 10 years has been using methods similar to those used decades ago.  Filling in the census paper sent by mail, if you don’t answer, a census worker will appear at your door to get the information. Even with this personalized approach, there are still many problems like natural disasters that may cause people to miss responding. In the 2020 tally the census miscounted over 18.8 million people.  Looking at the numbers, they ended up getting very close to counting the true population of the United States, but that was due to the fact that 5.2 million people were counted twice, miscounting two million people, and not counting certain people. Many of the remaining census surveys not submitted were taken through imputation using a statistical guess to count a population (New York Times).  This will tend to neglect persons of a certain race and ethnicity, thus not giving an accurate count for minorities.

 Solutions for the Census Count

The Census Bureau is exploring new approaches to collecting population data, such as using outside sources and compiling data from a variety of sources, to not only reduce their margin of error, but to cut costs as well. 

New and Improved Annual Business Reports by the Census

Another area that the Census covers is data on business ownership.  Currently, the Census provides  demographics and other statistics on business ownership every five years. In the future it will collect this data annually. This data is categorized by the Annual Business Survey (Employer component) and Non-Employer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D). This will be published on the Census’ website as annual reports come out.

Concerns Raised About Data Found in Business Ownership Reports

Data from 2018 showed Minority Owned Business totaled 9,709,323 (Census) employing either no employees or varying amounts of employees. This number is large, but it begs the question as to  accuracy.  The census has undercounted minorities in the general population,  so clearly faults in its ethnic data collection efforts must be seen in their other data collection efforts as well. 

My Opinion

I remember helping my parents fill out the census form the two years it was sent out in my lifetime.  I always thought that this had to be inefficient as most families would not care to do it, or simply just did not have the time.  Then I found out people would go door-to-door to get your data, which seems like even more of hassle and people will inevitably turn them away.  Using outside means of collection will not only increase the accuracy of the count, but also bolster the validity of the data gained from it.  The annual collection of Business Ownership data will also give more accurate information year to year of all businesses as well as consolidating businesses into one category instead of the previous employer vs non-employer statistic.

Bureau, US Census. “What We Do.” Census.gov, 18 Nov. 2021,      https://www.census.gov/about/what.html.

Wines, Michael. “One More Census Takeaway: The End of an Era of Counting the Nation?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Mar. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/us/census-data-counting-changes.html.

Wines, Michael, and Maria Cramer. “2020 Census Undercounted Hispanic, Black and Native American Residents.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Mar. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/us/census-undercounted-population.html.

Editor: William Michael Cunningham