Newsroom Archive

Alison Fields

Chief, Journey to Work and Migration Statistics Branch

Alison Fields is chief of the Journey to Work and Migration Statistics Branch in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. The branch is responsible for processing, analyzing and publishing data related to migration, commuting, and place of birth that are collected in the Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement, the American Community Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

Fields began her federal career at the Census Bureau in 1998 as a demographer in the Racial Statistics Branch of Population Division. From 2000 to 2003, she worked at Westat, Inc. as a research analyst working on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), which followed 21,260 children from kindergarten through eighth grade. While at Westat,Inc. she also worked extensively with the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, and on the HHS Trends compendium. Fields returned to the Census Bureau in 2003, joining the Journey to Work and Migration Statistics Branch, and assumed the position of chief in 2007. She is currently leading the branch through a process of formulating new migration and commuting flow products with consideration to the American Community Survey program and data visualization.

Fields earned her bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard University, and earned her doctorate in demography from the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, with special concentrations in epidemiology and sociology. She and her husband, Jason (Chief of the Longitudinal Research, Evaluation, and Outreach Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau), have four daughters, and reside in southern Maryland.