2020 Census Undercounted U.S. Population by Nearly 19 Million

The 2020 census undercounted the nation’s inhabitants by 18.8 million folks, the Census Bureau mentioned on Thursday, acknowledging that the depend had underrepresented Black, Latino and Indigenous residents.

On the similar time, the census overcounted the variety of white and Asian residents, the bureau mentioned.

Robert L. Santos, the bureau’s director, mentioned that regardless of the omissions, the outcomes had been per current censuses.

“That is notable, given the unprecedented challenges of 2020,” he mentioned in a press release. “However the outcomes additionally embrace some limitations — the 2020 census undercounted lots of the similar inhabitants teams we now have traditionally undercounted, and it overcounted others.”

The U.S. inhabitants grew to 323.2 million, the bureau mentioned on Thursday, a 5 p.c improve from 2010.

“We stay happy with the job we achieved within the face of immense challenges,” Mr. Santos mentioned. “And we’re able to work with the stakeholders and the general public to completely leverage this enormously invaluable useful resource.”

The 2020 census confronted a collection of challenges. The coronavirus pandemic shut down a lot of the depend simply because it was starting in April 2020, forcing the bureau to increase its work by almost two months. Later within the 12 months, wildfires within the West and coastal hurricanes upended the bureau’s work simply as door-knockers had been fanning out to survey tens of millions of households that had not crammed out their types.

The Trump administration later moved up the deadline to complete the counting, elevating considerations about an undercount. The issues led many specialists, together with some senior Census Bureau officers, to fret that the ultimate depend could be fatally flawed.

In September, a 59-page evaluation of the 2020 census commissioned and reviewed by the American Statistical Affiliation mentioned the depend appeared correct sufficient for its overriding constitutional objective: reallocating the 435 seats within the Home of Representatives.

However the specialists who drafted the report restricted their findings to the general nationwide tally and counts within the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Rather more research could be wanted, they mentioned, to gauge the reliability of native inhabitants totals and traits reminiscent of race and ethnicity which are important elements of each census.