Trump’s hiring freeze has halted local head counts and could threaten the U.S. census

Unless the White House changes its order, counting can’t start in White House, Tenn.

It’s one of at least three communities in the South and Midwest with plans for a special local census this year that are now on ice because of President Trump’s hiring freeze on federal government employees.

“This was unexpected. We didn’t think that it would affect something like this. But it did,” John Corbitt, White House’s mayor, tells NPR.

The Tennessee town — about an hour north of Nashville and named after what was once a white-painted inn — paid the U.S. Census Bureau more than $581,000 upfront last August for a local head count ahead of the next once-a-decade, national census in 2030. A more up-to-date tally could boost the town’s share of population-based funding from the state by as much as $875,000 a year, local officials estimate.

“We’ve experienced some pretty rapid growth along with the rest of Middle Tennessee,” Corbitt says. “We realized that the [last national] census that was done five years ago had us a little under 13,000 people. And based on the number of houses that have gone up, people that have moved here, we know we’re well above that.”

In Tennessee, only a certified population count produced through either a special local census or the national tally can be used to determine state funding levels. Results from a bureau-conducted special census can also be factored into the federal government’s annual population estimates, which are used to distribute federal money to communities.

But exactly how close today’s White House is to local officials’ estimate of 18,000 residents will remain a mystery for now.

After Trump issued a memorandum in January restricting the federal government from hiring civilian employees, Corbitt says the bureau told local officials they had to pause their special census plans, which included rolling out an online questionnaire in February and sending door knockers to visit unresponsive households starting in April.

“They’re the ones doing the hiring, so technically, they’re federal employees,” Corbitt explains.

The bureau’s public information office did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, NPR has confirmed the federal hiring freeze has also halted special censuses in the towns of Aurora, Ill., and Westfield, Ind., which set aside close to $1.8 million to pay for a local tally to start in May.

“If the census will not occur, we would expect [a] refund so that we can invest those funds in local projects, such as infrastructure needs,” Scott Willis — the mayor of Westfield, a northern Indianapolis suburb — tells NPR in a statement.

There are signs of trouble for ongoing local counts and the U.S. census in 2030

Trump’s hiring freeze has not stopped the bureau-run local tallies in the Chicago suburbs of Volo, Ill., and West Dundee, Ill., where counting began in January.

But Kelly Mastera, assistant to the village manager in West Dundee, says census workers who started knocking on doors last month have reported getting a lot of pushback from some residents they tried to interview, including questions about why this special census is taking place at the beginning of Trump’s second administration.

“When we were looking at this from a strategic standpoint at the village level, we were not at all looking at the federal elections. We were more monitoring it and seeing when the data would be available in calculating out the cost-benefit of doing a special census,” Mastera says.

Advocates of the U.S. census are watching to see how the hiring freeze could affect preparations for the national 2030 count, which is set to be used to determine each state’s share of congressional seats, Electoral College votes and federal funding in the coming decade.

With thousands of temporary workers needed for a major 2030 census field test coming up next year, the hiring freeze could derail efforts to improve the counts of people of color, young children and other historically undercounted populations, says Meeta Anand, senior program director of census and data equity at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“Failing to conduct the test properly, you know, sadly leads us to worry that that means that the 2030 census will not count all communities accurately,” Anand warns. “2030 sounds like it’s a long way away, but we’re at a crucial and critical point of the cycle.”

For the mayor of Tennessee’s White House, though, the focus remains on getting his town counted again first.

“We’ve paid for the special census, so there’s really no way to plan except just to stay in touch with the Census Bureau and get updates from them,” Corbitt says. “We’re sort of in the dark here.”

Edited by Benjamin Swasey