1/10/2011 No new MSAs for 2011

Today marked the end of waiting for the Office of Management and Budget to release their annual list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas/Metropolitan Divisions. Previously, the "Update for Statistical Area Definitions" for
Year____was announced on
2010____December 1, 2009
2009____November 20, 2008
2008____November 20, 2007
2007____December 18, 2006

A phone call today to the office of the Chief Statistician, Office of Management and Budget, confirmed that there will be no changes to "Statistical Area Definitions" for 2011.

As a matter of fact, it was announced in the Federal Register on June 28, 2010, that the Office of Management and Budget will adopt the "2010 Standards for Delineating Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas", and OMB plans to announce delineations of areas based on the 2010 standards and 2010 Census data in 2013.


Today's phone call confirms that there will be no MSA/MD changes until 2013.

These are the same actions that were taken 10 years ago, when there was a "freeze" on MSA definitions for a few years while we were waiting for the results of the Census2000 "long form" (containing income and housing data, just to name two important categories). Unfortunately, we no longer have "long form" data in the decennial Census - that data now comes from the 5-year averages of the American Community Survey (from the US Census Bureau).

On Tuesday, December 14, 2010, the US Census Bureau announced the release of the first set of 5-Year American Community Survey Estimates:

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb10-cn90.html

One of the most boring aspects of my job is to read sections of the Federal Register, but it does have revealing information: the OMB is not only looking forward to the announcement of new/revised Metropolitan Statistical Areas in 2013, but they will be issuing a more comprehensive update of metropolitan and micropolitan and related statistical areas in 2018 using the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year commuting and employment estimates.

(sorry there are no pretty pictures this week)