Upcoming Data Releases of Note

In the next few months, the U.S. Census Bureau is releasing multiple data products that will provide new years of data, as well as some new detail not currently available. Here are the four most valuable updates for better understanding NC and its changing demographics:

1. New county-to-county migration flow tables updated with 2011-15 data. The release of these tables and the update to the Census Flows Mapper web application will be the first time that non-overlapping 5-year flows tables are available for comparison (2006-10 and 2011-15). Scheduled for release August 10th.

1. 2016 American Community Survey: the most recent estimates of demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics for geographic areas with populations of 65,000 or more. The 2016 ACS will be released September 14th.

1. New language details in American FactFinder. The Census Bureau is adding new detail to the American FactFinder table on language spoken at home (Table B16001). The new languages being added are:
  - Haitian (previously “French Creole”)
  - Punjabi (previously “Other Indic languages”)
  - Bengali (previously “Other Indic languages”)
  - Telugu (previously “Other Asian languages”)
  - Tamil (previously “Other Asian languages”)
    Scheduled for release September 14th.

New language details in 2016 ACS microdata (PUMS). The Bureau is adding in new language detail on languages that were previously not available. The October 2016 release of the PUMS files will contain multiple new language codes, including many new codes for African languages that were previously grouped together, such as Somali, Oromo, Tigrinya, Yoruba, and Igbo.

Although many of these linguistic communities are relatively small in North Carolina, they are concentrated in certain areas. Raleigh has a large concentration of Telugu and Tamil speakers (among the top 10 non-English and non-Spanish languages spoken in Raleigh metro). Meanwhile, Greensboro was the only metro in North Carolina where African languages (Kru, Igbo, and Yoruba) were among the top 10 languages spoken at home other than English or Spanish.