2030 Census

Planning for the 2030 Census is underway.

Planning for a decennial census takes years. For the 2030 Census, we started Early Planning in 2018 and are currently in the Design Selection Phase.

This phase includes research, testing, and operational planning and design work to inform the selection of the initial 2030 Census operational design, which is the big picture plan for conducting the census.

We have begun dozens of research projects to address five focus areas, which we call Enhancement Areas. These five areas help drive our vision of enhancing the science of census-taking. They are largely based on our experiences and lessons learned from the 2020 Census.

We expect to decide on the initial 2030 Census operational design in late 2024.

Watch this video to learn more about our Enhancement Areas and our timeline for developing the operational design.

Public comments from the 2030 Census Federal Register Notice are publicly available.

You can read them first-hand.

As part of Design Selection Phase, we engaged with the public for ideas. For the first time, the public had the opportunity to formally give input on planning and designing the next census through a Federal Register Notice (FRN). The comment period was open from August 17, 2022 through November 15, 2022.

We sought public feedback on specific topics with the goal of helping ensure everyone is counted, especially historically undercounted populations. These topics included: reaching and motivating everyone to respond to the census, technology, new data sources, how we contact the public, and how we provide support to the public.

We received over 8,000 comments, which are contained within over 1,400 public submissions on Regulations.gov.

Here's how to access the comments:

Visit www.regulations.gov.
In the search bar, type “USBC-2022-0004” and click Search.
Select the Comments tab. Here you’ll find all the comments submitted to this FRN.
Questions? View a step-by-step guide on how to access the comments.
Please note that comments considered to be entirely out of scope are not included.

These are now being assessed and prioritized by Census Bureau experts and federal advisory committees. This review process will allow us to better integrate them into our 2030 Census research agenda as well as our 2030 operational design.

Watch this video to learn more about the feedback we received and how we are moving forward with it.

Learn what’s next for 2030 Census planning.

Continue developing the operational design.

Planning and executing the 2030 Census requires information and insight from many different sources, including Census Bureau staff, oversight entities, government agencies, stakeholders, the general public, and research participants. We will continue gathering input from a broad knowledge base to develop the operational design and finalize our research portfolio.

Continue discussing census content.

We will continue working with federal statistical agencies and other stakeholders on topics such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, that could affect what the census asks about. Our country is becoming more diverse, and we want to ensure our statistics continue to capture that diversity.

Share updates on our planning and research.

We know many stakeholders have already begun—or will soon begin—their own planning for 2030 Census outreach. To help inform your work, we will continue to post updates about our planning and research on this page. By this fall, we will release a report on how we incorporated the 2030 Census FRN comments into our research program on how we will move forward with 2030 Census FRN comments.