This morning there was a short news item on WHEC TV that there is only a week until the 2020 census ends. They mentioned that only over half of the houses in Rochester have responded to the census. That is very misleading as that is the self responses rate. Census enumerators have been knocking on doors to obtain information on houses that didn’t respond online, by mail, or via phone.

I can’t find detailed information on local lresidencs counted on the census website but it does say that as of yesterday 96.3% of houses in New York State have been enumerated. That sounds pretty good;  but seeing as NY State has a population of 19 and a half million that means approximately 720,000 people haven’t been counted.

Alabama has the lowest percentage of their population enumerated at 89.1%. I doubt they will get much better in just another week.

It is almost impossible to reach 100% for any census. People move around census day. People live in places that you wouldn’t expect them to be living in. Covid has added other problems this year in that the follow-up by census takers started much later than it should have.

It would be nice to have census enumerators continue after the end of September but that probably won’t happen. The main reason is that census has to completed and reported by the end of the year.  That data is used to determine the number of seats in the US House of Representatives. It is also used to draw lines for both US and local  political districts.

As far as genealogy is concerned, when the 2020 census becomes public in 72 years there will be many millions of names missing. Best guess, by using yesterday’s statistics, is that 10 to 15 million people will be not be listed.