I’m in the home stretch for getting the last chapter of the first draft of my census book completed. The next to last chapter of the book provides an overview of a number of derivatives that you can create from census data, and one of them is the daytime population.

There are countless examples of using census data for site selection analysis and for comparing and ranking places for locating new businesses, providing new public services, and generally measuring potential activity or population in a given area. People tend to forget that census data measures people where they live. If you were trying to measure service or business potential for residents, the census is a good source.

Counts of residents are less meaningful if you wanted to gauge how crowded or busy a place was during the day. The population of an area changes during the day as people leave their homes to go to work or school, or go shopping or participate in social activities. Given the sharp divisions in the US between residential, commercial, and industrial uses created by zoning, residential areas empty out during the weekdays as people travel into the other two zones, and then fill up again at night when people return. Some places function as job centers while others serve as bedroom communities, while other places are a mixture of the two.

The Census Bureau provides recommendations for calculating daytime population using a few tables from the American Community Survey (ACS). These tables capture where workers live and work, which is the largest component of the daytime population.

Using these tables from the ACS:

Total resident population

B01003: Total Population

Total workers living in area and Workers who lived and worked in same area

B08007: Sex of Workers by Place of Work–State and County Level (‘Total:’ line and ‘Worked in county of residence’ line)

B08008: Sex of Workers by Place of Work–Place Level (‘Total:’ line and ‘Worked in place of residence’ line)

B08009: Sex of Workers by Place of Work–Minor Civil Division Level (‘Total:’ line and ‘Worked in MCD of residence’ line)

Total workers working in area

B08604: Total Workers for Workplace Geography

They propose two different approaches that lead to the same outcome. The simplest approach: add the total resident population to the total number of workers who work in the area, and then subtract the total resident workforce (workers who live in the area but may work inside or outside the area):

Daytime Population = Total Residents + Total Workers in Area - Total Resident Workers

For example, according to the 2017 ACS Washington DC had an estimated 693,972 residents (from table B01003), 844,345 (+/- 11,107) people who worked in the city (table B08604), and 375,380 (+/- 6,102) workers who lived in the city. We add the total residents and total workers, and subtract the total workers who live in the city. The subtraction allows us to avoid double counting the residents who work in the city (as they are already included in the total resident population) while omitting the residents who work outside the city (who are included in the total resident workers). The result:

693,972 + 844,345 - 375,380 = 1,162,937

And to get the new margin of error:

SQRT(0^2 + 11,107^2 + 6,102^2) = 12,673

So the daytime population of DC is approx 468,965 people (68%) higher than its resident population. The district has a high number of jobs in the government, non-profit, and education sectors, but has a limited amount of expensive real estate where people can live. In contrast, I did the calculation for Philadelphia and its daytime population is only 7% higher than its resident population. Philadelphia has a much higher proportion of resident workers relative to total workers. Geographically the city is larger than DC and has more affordable real estate, and faces stiffer suburban competition for private sector jobs.

The variables in the tables mentioned above are also cross-tabulated in other tables by age, sex, race, Hispanic origin , citizenship status, language, poverty, and tenure, so it’s possible to estimate some characteristics of the daytime population. Margins of error will limit the usefulness of estimates for small population groups, and overall the 5-year period estimates are a better choice for all but the largest areas. Data for workers living in an area who lived and worked in the same area is reported for states, counties, places (incorporated cities and towns), and municipal civil divisions (MCDs) for the states that have them.

Data for the total resident workforce is available for other, smaller geographies but is reported for those larger places, i.e. we know how many people in a census tract live and work in their county or place of residence, but not how many live and work in their tract of residence. In contrast, data on the number of workers from B08604 is not available for smaller geographies, which limits the application of this method to larger areas.

Download or explore these ACS tables from your favorite source: the American Factfinder, the Census Reporter, or the Missouri Census Data Center.