Counting Like a State An inside look at the 2020 Census that shows the importance of state and local cooperation in the complex federal project of census taking.The census plays a...

And for how things went on the ground, intergovernmentally, that is [geek that I am...], see

kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700639687/

For background on these matters, what happened in 2020, see below. It's almost 500 pages!

www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/pan...

Excellent. Look forward to wide promotion of this effort.

Can PRB, or a coalition of state data centers pick up the list?

Where in law is there a right for a person/institution/business to know who is accessing their "data"?

A MAGA Warrior Is Rifling Through Your Mortgage Paperwork I’m by no means the first one to note this. But it’s...

also...
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-mag...

Trump Is Claiming Mortgage Fraud to Attack Enemies. Is Your Information Public?

The data community needs to weigh in here, not just on “privacy,” but on data “stewardship,” the way data curators see their ethical responsibilities. The administration has a completely different understanding, namely that all “data” is fair game for their agenda.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/b...

Yup...just found one of our census amici briefs cited in fn 152,

repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/medi...

Trump seeks to change how census collects data and wants to exclude immigrants in US illegally President Donald Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to change how the Census Bureau collects data, seeking to exclude immigrants in the United States illegally.

More on Trump’s proposals for the census, and the federal statistical system….
apnews.com/article/trum...

More tinkering: When to report. Who does what, BLS or Census Bureau. What about private sector surveys? What else could one use to measure unemployment, a new question once the Social Security Act [1935] authorized unemployment “insurance.”
More to come...

The “Current Population Survey” was born and has been around ever since. We have a “data series”!

4. Get the tabulation report out fast, preferably 2-3 weeks after the data collection.
5.Who’s going to pay for it? For ~10 years, a government “experiment,” originally the “monthly report on the labor force,” late 1930s-1940s, to work out kinks. [Skipping WWII here, a big part of the story.]

3. Let’s get the definition straight: a person was only unemployed if in the right demographic [not too old, not too young], and actually looking for work the week the sample surveyors came around.

2. Probability sampling [a hot new thing at the time], would permit frequent simple measurement [monthly!], so we’ll need a staff of “field interviewers.”

1. Unemployment fluctuates a lot with the cycles of the larger economy, and needs frequent measurement. A census is the wrong instrument to measure it. Too expensive, too slow for the reporting.....

The “data” were unsatisfactory, irregularly reported, long story short, the Depression accelerated technical work on the issue. [A truncated version of the issues…]

A question for the “occupied” population went on the 1880 census, usa.ipums.org/usa-action/v..., asking the “number of months this person has been unemployed during the census year.” Stayed with changes until 1930 census, including a Congressionally mandated “unemployment census” in 1930 and 1931.

Unemployment, labor force participation, is hard to measure.

Who does it apply to? Adults? Of what ages? People with their own “businesses”? What about farmers? What about “homemakers?” ....

A series of posts on the history of data.
Like the bridges and roads one drives on, one doesn’t need to know about the bridge builder, unless the bridge falls down, fails. Then all of a sudden it’s really important, which is what happened Friday August 1, 2025, with the monthly unemployment report.

Data series, like the unemployment rate, or the consumer price index, are “infrastructure” – need to be “built,” engineered, “usable,” are the work of many hands, built over time, generate debate and commentary about how to build, which allows historians like me to report on the building process....

Doge went after administrative data, not survey data, so the threats have been in different places than the ones I expected…until yesterday, so now the game is on….

History of the Current Population Survey (CPS) A brief history of the CPS.

And the geeky technical history, which we’ll all have to dive back into …
www.census.gov/programs-sur...

And this…
www.amstat.org/docs/default...

You can “other” them into categories of “exclusion” –e.g. proposals to fiddle the constitutional basis of apportionment. Add a “citizenship” question to the 2030 census. “Exclude” “non citizens” from House apportionment calculations. One version of that. www.congress.gov/bill/118th-c...

Or if you stigmatize the person/institution/organization counted in the classification process.....

Questions…

What next? More leaks/revelations from WSJ or other outlets?

Why now? What were Bondi/Bongino thinking by the initial effort to shut stuff down? Why didn’t they continue stonewalling?

😀

4. All before we get to “ethnicity” in the 1977 “statistical policy directive, currently defined as “Hispanic or Latino, or Not Hispanic or Latino.”

3. t.o be distinguished from: free persons, white, White, and then stumbling over other categories: Indian, Indian not taxed, civilized Indian, Chinese, Celestial, Japanese, Korean, Filipino...

Who Counts? One of Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 2000For those interested in understanding the historical and scientific context of the census adjustment controversy, Who Counts? is absolutely

2. Factoid: Before 1977, the US did not have an “official” statistical classification of “race” and/or “ethnicity.” The category “African-American” was variously [selective list]: black, Black, colored, negro, Negro, “other persons,” slave, free colored…
www.russellsage.org/publications...