At the end of my third year as director of the U.S. Census Bureau, I’ve been thinking a lot about our work and how our success lies in the ability to put relevant and useful data into the hands of the public.

It’s exciting to think about all the ways we provided quality data on our nation’s people, places, and economy in 2024 – and all the ways that we continuously adapted our collection methods to meet America’s data needs and maintain our quality standards. We continuously researched strategies for improving respondent understanding of the questions we ask and the accuracy of the data we produce. And we continuously engaged the public to promote the value of our data and to collect feedback and input as to how we can improve our methods, our data, and the relevance of our statistical products.

A great example of this is our release of data from the 2022 Economic Census, a primary source of information about the U.S. economy. In January, we released new First Look estimates. By combining our expertise with machine learning technology, we were able to improve our efficiency in data collection and produce these estimates earlier than we have in the past.

Also from the Economic Census in December, we released (ahead of schedule) the Geographic Area Statistics, which provide detailed industry statistics by state, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, counties, and places for U.S. employer businesses. For the first time, these statistics were made available in a single release – every sector and geography published at the same time! Continue reading...

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