OCT. 27, 2021 — The U.S. Census Bureau today released an analytical report in advance of publishing experimental data from the American Community Survey (ACS), one of the nation’s most comprehensive sources of population and housing information about the U.S.  

The report, An Assessment of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the 2020 ACS 1-Year Data, describes how the pandemic disrupted ACS data collection in 2020 and gives data users insights into why the Census Bureau decided to release the 2020 ACS 1-year estimates as an experimental product. The Census Bureau ultimately determined the standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates did not meet our statistical quality standards.  

The Census Bureau also released a blog, Pandemic Impact on 2020 American Community Survey 1-Year Data with the report, providing an overview about the contents of the report, and quality measures showing the impact of the pandemic on the annually-released measures of survey quality.

In November, the Census Bureau will release a set of experimental estimates from the 1-year data as well as a technical working paper describing the experimental methodology. The experimental data will cover a limited number of topics for the nation, all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For more information on changes to the 2020 ACS 1-year release, visit <www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/experimental-data.html>  

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