The U.S. census counts every resident in the United States. It is mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution and takes place every 10 years. The Economic Census provides detailed information on employer businesses, including detailed data by industry, geography, and more.

Statistics Canada

The Census Bureau is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce and its director is appointed by the President of the United States….United States Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau is the federal government’s largest statistical agency. We are dedicated to providing current facts and figures about America’s people, places, and economy.

The 2020 Census will not ask for anyone’s Social Security number, for money, or for bank account or credit card numbers. It will not ask for household income or details about how a home is built.

The Census Bureau cannot rely solely on other agencies’ data instead of your responses for several reasons: First, these data–called administrative records–do not contain the data for everyone. Second, we cannot obtain all of the required data from administrative records.

If you do not fill in the census, a census officer will contact you and encourage you to complete it. If you still don’t return a completed census, you will be committing a crime and you will be contacted by our Non-Compliance team.

The Census Bureau will never ask for your full Social Security number, bank account or credit card numbers, money or donations, or anything on behalf of a political party. The 2020 Census will not ask citizenship status. The Census Bureau may call or email you as part of their follow-up and quality control efforts.

We ask questions about age and date of birth to understand the size and characteristics of different age groups and to present other data by age. These statistics also help enforce laws, regulations, and policies against age discrimination in government programs and in society.

Do verify that a census taker who comes to your home is legitimate. They should have a Census Bureau photo ID badge (with a Department of Commerce watermark and an expiration date) and a copy of the letter the bureau sent you. You can also search for an agent’s name in the Census Bureau’s online staff directory.

So if you’ve already responded to the 2020 Census, why might a census taker visit? The most common reason is that we’re clarifying information about your address. You may have responded using your address instead of the Census ID printed on your census invitation.

It was dangerous work and more than 200 U.S. marshals have died in the line of duty. Two of them lost their lives while acting as census takers. Assailants murdered Deputy Marshal C.R.V. Schefsky on September 7, 1870, while he enumerated households in the Bastrop, TX, area.

A person may have filled out more than one Census form and the Census Bureau did not catch the duplicate forms from the same household. Another reason is that some individuals might own two homes, living part of the year in one place and part of the year in another, and may have filled out two Census forms.

If you wish to independently confirm that the person at your door is a Census Bureau field representatives conducting a household survey other than the 2020 Census you can enter their name in the Census Bureau’s staff search website, or contact the Regional Office for your state.

The census questionnaire asks for people’s names to ensure that each household member is counted only once. Names, along with other information in the questionnaire, helps census workers “de-duplicate” the data—which means to remove extra records if a person appears more than once in the count.

The 2020 Census form will include just a handful of questions that are asked about every person in a household:

• Name.
• Relationship to Person 1.
• Sex.
• Age.
• Date of birth.
• Hispanic origin.
• Race.

We ask for the name of each person in the household for two reasons. Without the name and phone number, we would have to send a field representative to gather the information in person, which is more expensive than a phone call.

What do I have to do? Every householder must either answer the questions for everyone living there, or make sure each person answers their own. This year, people are being asked to fill the census out online using an access code sent in the post.