Executive Summary

The American Community Survey (ACS) is one of three program components required to achieve the 2010 Census reengineering strategy goals. The ACS replaces the Census Sample, also known as the census long form, the once-a-decade collection of detailed demographic, housing, and socioeconomic data, that occurs as part of the decennial census, with an ongoing survey that produces annual and multi-year estimates of these same characteristics. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) was conducted as part of Census 2000 to demonstrate the operational feasibility of ACS methods. To date reports have been issued addressing questions of conducting the ACS coincident with the decennial census, technical performance, and the implications of changing the ACS to a voluntary survey. In this report, we compare Census 2000 Sample estimates to those produced by the C2SS to look for substantive differences, possible explanations, and supporting evidence about which is likely to be better in the event we find differences. Specifically, the report includes comparisons of the economic profile characteristics for:

• Employment Status;
• Commuting to Work;
• Occupation, Industry, and Class of Worker; and
• Income and Poverty.

We produced this report to educate users of these economic data and ease the transition from the decennial census sample estimates to the ACS estimates.