Social Explorer announces today that the 2010 census data is now available for all US states and territories.  Fresh from the Census Bureau, this data set give users information about changes in population, race, ethnicity, and housing occupancy.

The full version is available in the Premium edition, and population change data is available in the Free edition.  Social Explorer’s Professional Edition is now distributed by Oxford University Press.  You can signup for an institutional trial or subscribe as an individual to access these latest data and all of Social Explorer’s features.

The New York Times featured Social Explorer’s content in its interactive map of the US.  Click it to explore.

With the latest releases from the Census Bureau, Social Explorer data and analysis are featured in the New York Times again.  Illustrative maps and charts featuring Census and Social Explorer data accompany the article.

NYC Grows a Little, Confusion Grows a Lot:

In “New York City’s Population Barely Rose in the Last Decade, Census Finds,” New York Times reporter Sam Roberts examines the city’s growth and how the population numbers fell short of estimates.

Among the latest findings:

For the first time since the draft riots during the Civil War, the number of black New Yorkers has declined, by 5 percent since 2000. Non-Hispanic blacks now account for 23 percent of New Yorkers.

The number of Asians increased 32 percent, passing the one million mark. They now constitute 13 percent of the population.

The Hispanic population rose 8 percent and now makes up 29 percent of the total.

Non-Hispanic whites registered a 3 percent decline, or 31,649 (compared with a drop of nearly 362,000 in the 1990s) — the smallest decrease in a half-century of white flight. They now constitute 33 percent of the population. Manhattan and Brooklyn accounted for the only counties in the country with a million or more people where the white share of the population rose.

The Bronx gained 52,000 people, second only to Suffolk among the state’s counties.

Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City University of New York, said the lower population figure “means that growth has declined substantially in New York City as it has in the rest of the country.” (In Buffalo, the population declined by nearly 11 percent to 261,310 — the lowest since 1890.)

For more on the mismatch between the census count and the American Community Survey estimates, check out Andrew Beveridge’s GothamGazette.com column “Census Brings Unpleasant Surprise for State Politicians.”

Blacks Migrating to the South:

Following up on last week’s article about the decline of the black population in New York City, the New York Times looks at patterns in the black population nationwide.  In the article “Many U.S. Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend,” Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff explain:

The percentage of the nation’s black population living in the South has hit its highest point in half a century, according to census data released Thursday, as younger and more educated black residents move out of declining cities in the Northeast and Midwest in search of better opportunities.

The share of black population growth that has occurred in the South over the past decade — the highest since 1910, before the Great Migration of blacks to the North — has upended some long-held assumptions.

Click here for the full article and to see the Social Explorer map.

One hundred years ago today, a fire devastated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan.  Burned, trapped and injured as they tried to escape, 146 people died in the blaze.  Many of them young immigrant women, the median age of the victims was 20, and some were as young as 14.

Their deaths brought attention to dangerous working conditions in factories.  Public outcry, labor organizing and advocacy helped to improve workplace safety and employment laws.

Looking back to the victims, we know their names and something about their backgrounds thanks to remembrance projects and documentarians.   With Social Explorer, you can learn more about when and where they lived.

Using 1910 census data, we focused on downtown Manhattan census tracts where multiple victims resided (based on a map from Street Pictures).

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Victim Manhattan Neighborhoods (1910 census tract)

In these Lower East Side and Village neighborhoods, more than two thirds of residents were recently arrived immigrants.  The concentration of immigrants was high, even for Manhattan.  In the borough, 77% of residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants, while in these neighborhoods, nearly 97% were.

New York City may be a melting pot, but it was almost exclusively mixing immigrants together.  These census tracts housed almost no native born whites and even fewer blacks.  (In one of the tracts with a higher black population, the number of black residents equaled the number of residents born at sea—a scant six people.)

Many of these immigrants came from Russia (47.6%), Austria (22.7%) and Italy (12.0%), followed by Hungary (5.7%), Germany (3.9%) and Ireland (2.2%).

Social Explorer’s tools help users learn more context about the past.

As the 2010  state-by-state census data continues to roll out, the new numbers offer more detail on changes in Michigan.  In “Detroit Census Confirms a Desertion Like No Other,” New York Times reporter Katherine Seelye examines the scope of the population decline.  Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge helped to explain the  trend:

Laying bare the country’s most startling example of modern urban collapse, census data on Tuesday showed that Detroit’s population had plunged by 25 percent over the last decade. It was dramatic testimony to the crumbling industrial base of the Midwest, black flight to the suburbs and the tenuous future of what was once a thriving metropolis.

It was the largest percentage drop in history for any American city with more than 100,000 residents, apart from the unique situation of New Orleans, where the population dropped by 29 percent after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College.

Detroit is the only city in the United States where the population has climbed above one million but also fallen below one million, Mr. Beveridge said. And because of the magnitude of Detroit’s population drain, Michigan is the only state to register a net population loss since 2000. Michigan’s population fell by 0.6 percent while the nation’s as a whole grew by 9.7 percent.

The reasons for Detroit’s losses over the last decade include the travails of the auto industry and the collapse of the industrial-based economy.

“There’s been an erosion of the nation’s industrial base, and this is the most dramatic evidence of it,” Mr. Beveridge said.

Click here to read the full article.

It’s springtime and data are in bloom!

Social Explorer has been adding 2010 data as the Census Bureau rolls it out state by state.  The following states are already available to our users.

The following states and geographies will be released this week and available on Social Explorer by next week.

Stay tuned for new Social Explorer features, including congressional district maps,  year-to-year comparisons and more.

In “Escape from New York,” the New York Times’ Charles Blow writes about the significance of New York City in Black America.  Soon to be reported census numbers are expected to show that the black population has declined “Black mecca and magnet.”  Blow cites Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge in his exploration of the shift and the causes behind it.

Next week, the Census Bureau will release local data for New York. And if those data come in as expected, they will show the first drop in the black population of New York City on a census since at least 1880, according to Professor Andy Beveridge, a sociologist at the City University of New York. (The white, Asian and Hispanic populations are all expected to grow.)

There is also the city’s continued shedding of manufacturing jobs and shrinking middle class that is pushing it ever closer to becoming a dim, stilted wasteland of the wealthy, from edge to edge.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Social Explorer can be be your patron saint of demography.  Social Explorer has data on Irish residents back to the nation’s founding.  With Social Explorer, users can see where Irish immigrants have settled and moved over the years.

According to the first census in 1790, there were 11,139 Irish residents in the young nation, representing just 1.5% of the total population, which was mostly British.  During the peak immigration years in the early part of the 20th century, Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian and German were the largest groups of new immigrants with over a million foreign born residents for each residing in the US in 1920.

Map of Irish Foreign Born in the US (1920 Census)

You can see concentrations of Irish immigrants in the Northeast and the West

In 1980, the Census Bureau started tracking detailed ancestry information.  Today, the 22,479,693 residents of Irish ancestry make up 7.5% of the population, and an additional 14 million identify as part Irish, bringing that up to over one tenth of the population.  But on St. Patrick’s Day, perhaps everyone is a little Irish.

Map of Irish Ancestry in the US (American Community Survey 2005-09)

Click the maps to explore more.  In honor of the holiday, you can also color your maps in a festive green with our custom color sets.

How has your state, your county, or your neighborhood changed since 2000?  Social Explorer’s new data from the 2010 Census will help you find out.

The Census Bureau has been releasing redistricting data state-by-state from the 2010 census (specifically the PL94-171 file).   The first 42 states (plus Puerto Rico and D.C.) are already available on Social Explorer’s map and report tools, and data for the entire nation will be ready over the next few weeks as it is released.

Social Explorer’s customized reports present an extract of these 2010 data along with the 2000 figures to give users an early side-by-side comparison of changes in population, race, ethnicity, and housing occupancy.

Sample of 2000-2010 Alabama Data from Social Explorer

These data have been used by the New York Times to display change for several states including Louisiana and New Jersey, Texas, California, and Arizona.

You can do similar analyses for your area using Social Explorer.  The full version is available in the Premium edition, and population change is available in the Free edition.  Social Explorer’s Professional Edition is now distributed by Oxford University Press.  You can signup for an institutional trial or subscribe as an individual to access these latest data and all of Social Explorer’s features.

This past decade, Arizona was the second fastest growing state in the nation (after Nevada), according to newly released census numbers.  In the New York Times article, “Hispanics Are Surging in Arizona,” Marc Lacey reports on the boom.  Along with trends in California and Texas, the Hispanic population is driving much of the state’s growth.  Yet, in Arizona that rise in the Hispanic population, though prominent, has slowed somewhat.  Graphics featuring Census and Social Explorer data accompany the article.

In Arizona, fervor against illegal immigration is so intense that politicians have pushed some of the nation’s toughest laws and citizen activists have patrolled the border themselves. But census data released Thursday show another side of the population story: Arizonans are increasingly becoming Hispanic.

Still, the increase in Hispanics, to just under 30 percent of the population last year from 25 percent in 2000, has been slower than some studies predicted. Tough economic times coupled with restrictions on illegal immigrant workers are probably responsible for driving many Hispanics away, analysts say.

Additionally, the demographics of the Hispanic population help to inform public policy dynamics:

Despite the size of the Hispanic population, nearly 40 percent of it is under age 18 and an untold number of others are not legally able to vote, meaning the numbers do not translate into political clout.

Click here to read the full story.

California remains the largest state in the union by far, but  the latest census numbers reveal that the state is growing less quickly than before.  In the New York Times article “For California, A Slower-Growing Population,” Jennifer Medina examined the decreased growth and the changing racial and ethnic composition of the state.  Graphics featuring Census and Social Explorer data accompany the article.

Perhaps the legendary beaches here are losing their pull. California, once the very symbol of sun-drenched American growth, had a population increase of only 10 percent in the last decade, the slowest rise in the state’s history. And for the first time since California became a state in 1850, it will not gain a Congressional seat.

The population of the most-populous state continued to shift eastward, with inland Southern California counties showing the most explosive growth, according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

The recent growth in the state has been largely fueled by Hispanics, who continued to increase in numbers, though at a slower rate than in the 1990s. The number of whites continued to decline. They now make up just 40 percent of the state, compared with 47 percent in 2000.

Basically, the overall number of California girls is stabilizing, while more and more of them are California chicas.

Click here to read the full story.