Changing demographics of the US population

Zia Daniell Wigder | November 28, 2007, 12:17 PM

We’re getting an increasing number of questions about the multicultural US market, which means I spend a good amount of time pouring over US Census data. While the next official census won’t be conducted until 2010, the American Community Survey is conducted every year to “fill in the gaps between each 10 year census”.

Below are a few high-level takeaways on the US population (ages 5+) from the 2006 survey, released a couple of months ago:

- Percentage of US population speaking a language other than English at home: 20% (figure in 2000: 18%)
- Percentage of US population speaking English “less than very well”: 9%

- Percentage of US population that is foreign born: 13% (figure in 2000: 11%)
- Percentage of foreign-born population speaking only English: 16%
- Percentage of native-born population speaking only English: 90%

- Percentage of US population speaking Spanish at home: 12% (figure in 2000: 10%)
- Percentage of Spanish speakers that are native born: 49%
- Percentage of native-born Spanish speakers speaking English “very well”: 79%
- Percentage of foreign-born Spanish speakers speaking English “very well”: 27%

Languages that over one million people in the US speak at home, in declining order: Spanish, Chinese, French, Tagalog, Indic languages (including Hindi and Gujarathi), German, Vietnamese and Korean.

More stats from the survey available through this link.