Census 2020: The Results Are In

The U.S. population keeps growing—and it’s getting more diverse. Those are two of the highlights from the results of the 2020 Census. The U.S. requires this official count of the U.S. population to take place every 10 years.

More than 331 million people now live in the U.S. That’s an increase of almost 23 million since the last census. More than half of that population growth was due to an increase in the number of Hispanic Americans. Nearly one in five people living in the U.S. is Hispanic. Also, the number of Americans who identify as multiracial, or belonging to more than one race, tripled in the past decade.

But the Census isn’t just about counting people. Census results can have a big impact on the country. For one thing, census data will help the federal (national) government decide how to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars among the 50 states each year. That money is used for everything from repairing highways to helping schools. 

Census results also determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives. Each state’s number of representatives is based on its share of the nation’s population, so some states gain or lose representatives after each Census. (See the map below.) Those changes will take effect before the next national elections, in 2022.