Census 2020: How Many of Your Neighbors Are Responding?

Updated April 14 at 2:30 p.m.

When the U.S. Census Bureau sets out to count all the people in the nation every 10 years, it hires a small army of workers to go door-to-door and follow up with every household that hasn’t responded to the census questionnaire.

That’s going to be a lot tougher this year in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.

Door-to-door canvassing wasn’t due to start until mid-May, and now census officials have postponed it until Aug. 11. But whether we’ll be out of the woods with the pandemic by then is unclear.

Of course, the more folks that take the census on their own, the fewer houses those census takers will have to visit — and the less concern there'll be with virus transmission.

You’ve probably received a Census 2020 invitation in the mail in the last week or two. It contains a Census ID number for your household and simple instructions for taking the census online (or by phone or mail).

Even if you didn’t receive the invitation — or can’t find it — you can go to My2020Census.gov, start the questionnaire and hit the link that reads “If you do not have a Census ID, click here.” It takes about 10 minutes to complete.

This year is the first time the decennial census has an online option. And given the importance of social distancing in the midst of a pandemic, it's well timed.

As of April 12, more than 48% of households had answered the census questionnaire.

How many people in your city and county have responded so far? The Census Bureau has launched an interactive map where you can track the response rate. It will be updated daily.

In the last census, in 2010, just over 68% of Californians responded on their own before door-to-door census takers were dispatched.

You can respond to the census in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Tagalog, Polish, French, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Japanese. And by law, the Census Bureau must keep your information confidential and cannot share it with other government agencies, not even law enforcement and immigration agencies.

Click on the image below to see the Census Bureau's continually updated self-response map.