Census data on speaking English, ancestry and getting to work

Census data indicate that fewer Long Islanders are speaking English at home, or speaking it well, that some ancestry groups are declining, and that it’s taking everyone on Long Island and in the greater New York area longer on average to commute to and from work.

Those are among the findings about life on Long Island from one-year and five-year data from the American Community Survey compared to the previous periods. After checking the charts below you can read about Long Island’s Census data.

Fewer speaking English at home, or well

The Census for years has been illustrating changes in Long Island’s population. One indicator in the newest data is the percentage of people age 5 and older not speaking English at home — 21.1 percent nationally from 2012-2016, up from 20.3 percent from 2007-2011. Here are the percentages for Nassau and Suffolk, which have margins of error of 0.2 or 0.3 percentage points, indicated by the small brackets at the top of each bar.


Smaller percentages for top three European ancestry groups

Residents who reported ancestry from Italy, Ireland and German have long had the highest percentages on Long Island, but all three saw smaller numbers in the 2012-2016 Census data.


And the daily commute gets longer

One-year data from the American Community Survey shows that the commute to and from work has been taking consistently longer for Long Islanders and for people throughout the New York area. Nationally the average is 26.1 minutes. The times charted here have a margin of error of 0.1 or 0.2 of a minute. In the chart on the right are the commuting methods most often claimed for 2012-16: driving alone, public transportation or carpooling. These statistics have a margin of error of 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points.


JavaScript charts via amCharts.