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!

We released a host of other new data this year, too. From the American Community Survey, we produced the 2019-2023 5-year estimates and the 2023 1-year estimates. We released our Vintage 2024 population estimates by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, and data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage from the 2023 Survey of Income and Program Participation.

We also released our final data products from the 2020 Census. The Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File B (Detailed DHC-B) contains information on household type and tenure for approximately 1,500 detailed racial and ethnic groups, as well as American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages. And the Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC) provides average household size and counts of people living in certain types of households.

And speaking of the decennial census, we are hard at work preparing for the 2030 Census. This year, we announced our plans for the 2026 Census Test. We've been designing improvements to try to get a complete count of hard-to-count and historically undercounted populations, and this will be our first opportunity to test them in real conditions. The test will be conducted in six sites across the country, and will include a nationally representative self-response testing component.

For two of the surveys that the Census Bureau conducts on behalf of other federal agencies, 2024 was a landmark year. We celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Internet Use Survey, a supplement to the Current Population Survey that we conduct on behalf of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. This survey represents a consistent and comprehensive data collection about internet and computer use in America – important data in the work to achieve digital equity.

We also marked the 50th anniversary of the American Housing Survey (AHS), conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The AHS is our nation’s most comprehensive housing survey, providing foundational data on the size, composition, quality, and cost of our nation’s housing – and how it’s changed over time. This is so important for communities, planners, and policymakers, all of whom use AHS data to assess local and national housing needs.

Through it all, we've cont inued our community-of-the-whole efforts to seek out different perspectives and actively engage the public in our work.

As you can see, 2024 has been a busy year, full of quality statistical data, innovation, and engagement… all of which I know will continue in the year ahead. Using public and whole-of-government engagement, we will continue to work on issues such as disability measurement and implementing Statistical Policy Directive 15 on revised race/ethnicity collection. And we’ll open the Puerto Rico Federal Statistical Research Data Center (PR FSRDC) – the first such center in a U.S. territory. By providing local researchers secure access to federal data for advanced statistical research and analysis, the PR FSRDC will enhance the statistical capacity on the island and enable local officials and others to make more informed and timely data-driven decisions.

Check out a full listing of our data releases for 2024 here. It is an honor and privilege to do the important work of meeting our nation’s data needs. Thank you for following along as our work continues at the Census Bureau!