NOTE – the website has returned to normal, but I’m leaving this post up in case the problem ever reoccurs.

So data.census.gov is not working today. I went there repeatedly and got an empty white screen each time, regardless of which web browser I tried. My wife spotted a post on an urban planning listserv where someone wrote that they contacted the Census Bureau. The Bureau was aware of the problem, but due of staff shortages related to COVID-19 it could take a week to fix!

Fortunately there are work-arounds. The post provided links to some suggestions at the State Data Center Clearing House. The first suggestion is to use the Chrome Browser, clear your cache, and try going directly to the advanced search link at https://data.census.gov/cedsci/advanced. This didn’t work for me, so I looked at the second suggestion, which is to create deep links to specific tables and search results. This worked, but if you’re not intimately familiar with census geography and table identifiers this could be tough going.

The good news is that if you can just get to one table, that gets you in the backdoor, bypassing the initial search screens that aren’t loading. From there you can use the filter in the table search results to find what you want. For example, go here:

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?g=0100000US&tid=ACSDP5Y2018.DP05

This brings you to the 5-year 2018 Data Profile table for Demographic and Housing for the United States. From there you can click the Filter button in the upper left-hand corner above the table name.

In the filter screen, scroll down to the bottom and hit the Clear All button to remove the filter for the US. Then go through the Advanced Filter options on the left and choose your Survey, Year, Geography, and Topic (see this earlier post for hints on this strategy). When you’re done, hit the green down arrows that Hides the filter menu (upper right-hand corner) and returns you to the results screen, where the new table results represent the filters you just applied. Browse around and download away! (Customize Table button, then Download)

There are alternatives to data.census.gov as well: the MCDC for getting decennial and ACS profiles (menu on right side of the screen) the Census Reporter for just the latest ACS data, and the NHGIS for accessing all census data tables past to present.