William G. Barron, Jr. has been Acting Director of the U.S. Census Bureau since January 20, 2001, in addition to continuing his duties as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer, a position he has held since April 1999. The ranking career civil servant at the U.S. Census Bureau, Mr. Barron served with distinction in top management posts at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for nearly 30 years before moving to the Commerce Department in August 1998.In his capacity as Acting Director, Mr. Barron heads an agency that provides the Nation with a wide array of statistics. By conducting the decennial census of population and housing, the Census gives the Nation its core demographic and social statistics. Its demographic surveys also produce data on such features of our society as income and poverty, and educational attainment. Its economic censuses and surveys generate the data that are widely used to describe the size, composition, and performance of the American economy. Mr. Barron manages a large staff of demographers, survey statisticians and economists.
As Deputy Under Secretary at the Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration in 1998-99, Mr. Barron exercised management and budget oversight of Census 2000 — often described as the largest peacetime mobilization in history. Since moving to the Census Bureau, he has been involved in managing budgets totaling $6.8 billion and a permanent and part-time staff that totaled more than half a million workers at the peak of Census 2000 operations.
Mr. Barron was previously called upon to head an agency that produces sensitive and widely-used economic data when he served as Acting Commissioner of BLS from 1991 to 1993. He was Deputy Commissioner of BLS from 1983 to 1998.
He has testified before the Congress on a wide range of topics covering management and budgetary matters, as well as sensitive economic and statistical issues such as unemployment and the cost of living. He is the only career official to serve as the deputy and acting head of the Federal Government’s two largest statistical agencies — the BLS and the Census Bureau.
His long history of outstanding contributions has been recognized by the prestigious National Public Service Award, the Presidential Distinguished Career Rank Award, and the Department of Labor Philip Arnow Award. He earned the Commerce Department’s highest honor, the Gold Medal, in 2000.
Mr. Barron was born in Washington, D.C. on October 7, 1946, and holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Maryland. He also has done graduate studies at George Washington and Catholic Universities in Washington, D.C.
He and his wife, Lois, met while students at the University of Maryland. She is an assistant principal and math teacher at St. Hugh’s School in Greenbelt, Md. They reside in Ellicott City, Md., and have three grown sons: William, James, and Kenneth.
