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.