O n Apr i l 1 , 2020 , the Uni ted States Census Bureau mailed out invitations to complete the 2020 Census questionnaire to households throughout the U.S. The 2020 Census is part of a longstanding decennial effort that began in 1790, mandated by the Constitution of the United States and conducted by the United States Census Bureau. Its intent is to count every person living in the United States and its five U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Chiefly, the results of the census determine the number of seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives, and they are used to draw congressional and state legislative districts. Consequently, the census also underlies troves of publicly available data that informs lawmakers, business owners, teachers, and many other decisionmakers in the community. Those determinations result in daily services, products and support for both individuals and their communities as a whole. Every year, billions of dollars in federal funding go to hospitals, fire departments, schools, roads, and other community resources based on census data. Over 130
federal programs use census data to allocate more than $675 billion each year to households, towns, cities and states throughout the nation. As a result, an inaccurate count could severely impact the resources and funding made available to our regional and state economies. Our team at The Right Place is no exception when it comes to reliance on the data collected by the census. Often, our business development team members turn to our workforce development partners and their federally funded programs to address businesses’ talent issues. When looking to attract businesses to the region, our business intelligence team turns to census data in order to craft a business case for a businesses’ relocation toWest Michigan. Similarly, we utilize the same information when a local company is looking to expand. When it comes to information on the economy, community demographics, or the region’s infrastructure, the business intelligence team leans on census data to support the community’s business decisions.
The Right Place’s business intelligence team also uses census data for the West Michigan Regional Dashboard. The West Michigan Regional Dashboard is an online tool that establishes a common set of shared indicators that will track the region’s progress on critical economic, environmental, and social outcomes. Nearly every one of the 36 indicators on the dashboard comes from census related data. You can find it at wmdashboard.org . The importance of an accurate census is far reaching and underpins more than what the eye meets. The business intelligence team at The Right Place is acutely aware of this reality. Whether it’s a multimillion- dollar project with hundreds of new jobs created or an interesting analysis in one of our West Michigan Dataconomy blogs,
we count on the census’ count. Complete the 2020 Census today at 2020census.gov .
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DATACONOMY: 2020 CENSUS
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