New tool helps track Utah demographics
Data help business and government in making decisions
"There are not that many kids," said Pamela Perlich, senior research economist for the U.'s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
An estimated one-sixth to one-seventh of the state's 75,000 to 100,000 undocumented immigrants are school age, Perlich said. She developed that estimate using data from the Pew Hispanic Center. Then she checked that against the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which shows similar numbers for the overall noncitizen foreign-born population.
Perlich helped legislative auditors with demographics for an audit set to be publicly released May 22. At a news conference Thursday at the governor's office, she used that as just one example of how the annual ACS survey of 250,000 households nationwide is becoming a useful tool in tracking demographic and economic trends.
"It's not just a matter of growth, it's change of composition and characteristics," she said. "Disentangling what is Utah, to how Utah is changing due to the influx has been a challenge."
It's important for information to be up to date, especially in Utah, the nation's sixth-fastest-growing state, so that governments and businesses can make informed planning decisions, said Preston Jay Waite, deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Waite said beyond apportionment, census data are used, in whole or in part, to distribute $200 billion annually in federal funds. And he said the ACS's annual tracking is helping the federal agency better prepare for the 2010 Census.
"I don't need to tell you ... it's very important to have an accurate and complete count," Waite said. Utah narrowly missed out on a fourth congressional seat following the 2000 Census, when its LDS missionaries serving out-of-state weren't counted.
Demographers have said current trends show Utah easily gaining that fourth seat in 2010, and a bill is pending in Congress that would give Utah the seat a bit early, along with a seat for the District of Columbia.
The continual ACS survey, which contains information such as household income and educational attainment, has been phased in since 2000 as a replacement of the census long form. One of the biggest reasons for the annual survey is the speed at which everything from population counts to employment change in today's world.
"Things change much more quickly," Waite said last week during a meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board. "If you only see the data once every 10 years, you can't manage" everything from government services to business advertising efficiently.
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