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U.S. Census Bureau webinar shows how to pull data with the Census Data API
Summary
The Census Bureau demonstrated browser-based use of the Census Data API, showing how to build URLs, retrieve older ACS and Economic Census data (including NAICS lookups), export CSVs with descriptive labels, and recommended resources and contacts for further help.
The U.S. Census Bureau hosted a webinar that demonstrated how to use the Census Data API to pull and export Census datasets without writing code. Presenter Sam Patten, a presenter with the U.S. Census Bureau, described the API’s URL structure, how to find variables and geographies, and three live examples using browser-based queries.
Patten led three demonstrations attendees can replicate in a browser. First, he built a query to return the estimated population under five for every county in Utah: he used the 2024 ACS 5‑Year Estimates, identified Utah’s state FIPS code (49), and swapped the variable to S0101_C01_002E (the estimated count for population under five) to return per‑county results. Patten explained the parts of variable names (table ID, column C01 = total, the position index, and the trailing E for estimate) and checked results against data.census.gov (he reported Beaver County returned 496 and 6.8% for under‑5 population in the comparison).
His second demonstration showed retrieving older ACS data not available on data.census.gov. Patten noted data.census.gov generally offers ACS back to 2010, while the API provides 1‑Year back to 2005 and 5‑Year back to 2009. To download full tables (for example DP05 for 2009), he recommended using group(DP05) with ampersand output_format=CSV and ampersand descriptive=true to include human‑readable labels in the CSV; he then demonstrated common Excel cleanup steps (wrap text, move geography column, freeze panes, filters) to make large tables easier to inspect.
The third example used 2007 Economic Census data to find the number of drive‑in movie theaters. Patten showed how to list NAICS codes with a wildcard, identified NAICS 512132 as the code for drive‑in theaters, and ran the 2007 query to return 254 establishments. He also noted longer historical series are available in County Business Patterns (for example, roughly 1,300 drive‑ins in 1986), a point he used to illustrate why older data often requires the API rather than the web interface.
On practical details, Patten said API keys are free and generally needed only if an account will make more than about 500 calls per IP address per day; organization keys are supported. He explained that non‑timeseries datasets generally require separate queries per year, whereas time‑series datasets allow multi‑period requests. He also warned that group() returns the full table (estimates, margins of error, annotation), so users who want only selected columns must request individual variables (limited to 50 variables per call) or filter post‑download.
Patten closed with resources and contacts: the Developers Page and User Guide on api.census.gov (including Response Formats for JSON/CSV), the feedback email census.data@census.gov for follow‑ups, and training/workshop opportunities and assistance from Census Data Dissemination Specialists. He also pointed to third‑party packages for programmers (tidycensus for R and censusdis for Python) while noting those packages are not maintained by the Census Bureau.
The webinar ended with a short Q&A in which Patten reiterated the limits on multi‑year queries, key issuance advice, and recommended parameters for large table downloads (output_format=CSV and descriptive=true). Attendees were directed to email census.data@census.gov for specific or unresolved questions.
