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Methodology & sources

Every number in this chart comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. This page sets out where each number comes from, how each category is defined, what is interpolated and what to be careful about.

What the chart shows

It is a bar-chart race of New York City's population by race and ethnicity at each decennial census from 1900 to 2020. The five-borough City of New York was consolidated in 1898, so 1900 is the first census of the city in its modern boundaries — that is why the series starts there and why the geography stays essentially constant across all 13 censuses.

Two views are available:

Number of people — the count of New Yorkers in each group. All five series are shown, including Hispanic or Latino.
Share of city — each group as a percentage of the city. Only the race-alone groups are shown (White, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Other or multiracial) so that the bars sum to roughly 100%.

Sources

1900–1990: Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States, U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division Working Paper No. 76 (2005) — the New York city table. census.gov
2000, 2010, 2020: U.S. Census Bureau decennial census (Summary File 1 and the P.L. 94-171 redistricting files), New York City.
Figures were compiled and cross-checked against the Census Bureau via the reference table at Demographic history of New York City, and the 2020 shares were confirmed against the New York City Department of City Planning's 2020 census materials.

How the categories are defined

Race-alone categories. White, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Other or multiracial are reported as "race alone." They sum to about 100% in every year. "Other or multiracial" bundles American Indian and Alaska Native, "some other race," and (from 2000, when the census first allowed it) people reporting two or more races.

The Hispanic-origin caveat. Hispanic or Latino is an ethnicity, not a race, and the census counts it separately. A Hispanic New Yorker is also counted inside one of the race bars — historically most often White, more recently often "some other race" or two or more races. That means the Hispanic bar overlaps the race bars and is not additive with them. It is included because Hispanic New Yorkers are now the city's largest or second-largest group and leaving them out would hide the biggest demographic change of the last 60 years. The on-screen note and this caveat make the overlap explicit. The Hispanic series is shown only in the "Number of people" view, and is excluded from "Share of city" so that the share bars can sum to 100%.

Non-Hispanic White. The data table below also lists non-Hispanic White (White and not Hispanic), which the census reports for 1940 and continuously from 1970. It is not drawn as a separate bar on the chart, because the difference between race-alone White and non-Hispanic White is only the small slice of Hispanic New Yorkers who mark their race as White — most mark “some other race” or two or more races instead, so that slice is far smaller than the full Hispanic population and showing it on the White bar was more confusing than clarifying. It is kept in the table for reference.

What is computed, and what is interpolated

Counts. Person counts are derived from each group's published percentage multiplied by the census total for that year: count = (share / 100) × total. Because the published shares are rounded to two decimals, a derived count can differ from the Census Bureau's own published count by a small rounding amount (at most a few hundred people in the early, tiny categories). The city totals themselves are the published census totals.

Interpolation. A census is taken once a decade. To animate the chart, values between two censuses are linearly interpolated, so the bars glide rather than jump. The figures are exact only at each decade (when the year reads 1900, 1910, … 2020). Pause on a census year, or read the methodology table below, for the real numbers. A group that the census had not yet counted grows in from zero at the decade it first appears.

A note on 2020

Between 2010 and 2020 the race-alone White share falls sharply (44.0% to 34.1%) and "Other or multiracial" jumps (17.7% to 28.1%). Part of this is real change, but part is a methodological shift: in 2020 the Census Bureau changed how it coded write-in race responses, and far more people — especially Hispanic respondents — were classified as "some other race" or "two or more races" rather than White. The non-Hispanic White share, which is less affected, fell much more gently (33.3% to 30.9%). Read the 2010-to-2020 race-alone change with that in mind.

The full data

Shares as used by the chart (race alone, except where noted). The Hispanic and non-Hispanic White columns overlap the race columns and do not add into the 100%.

Year	Total	White	Black	Asian/PI	Other	Hispanic	NH White
1900	3,437,202	98.04	1.76	0.19	0.00	—	—
1910	4,766,883	97.95	1.92	0.12	0.01	—	—
1920	5,620,048	97.14	2.71	0.14	0.00	—	—
1930	6,930,446	95.08	4.73	0.19	0.01	—	—
1940	7,454,995	93.59	6.15	0.24	0.01	1.62	91.97
1950	7,891,957	90.17	9.47	0.27	0.08	—	—
1960	7,781,984	85.33	13.98	0.55	0.13	—	—
1970	7,894,862	76.62	21.13	1.20	1.06	16.20	62.95
1980	7,071,639	60.72	25.23	3.27	10.77	19.88	51.88
1990	7,322,564	52.26	28.71	7.00	12.02	24.36	43.20
2000	8,008,278	44.66	26.59	9.90	18.85	26.98	34.98
2010	8,175,133	44.00	25.55	12.77	17.68	28.58	33.31
2020	8,804,190	34.09	22.08	15.73	28.11	28.29	30.89

Shares are percentages of the total city population. Em dashes mark years the census did not separately tabulate that group.

Limitations

Race and ethnicity categories, and how people answer them, have changed enormously across 120 years. A "White" New Yorker in 1900 and in 2020 were counted under very different rules and self-understandings. Treat the long arc as broadly comparable, not precisely so.
The Asian and Pacific Islander and "Other" categories were tiny and unevenly recorded before 1970; small early figures carry more uncertainty.
This piece covers the city as a whole. It does not show borough or neighborhood patterns, which differ sharply.
Built with AI assistance. The data, definitions and calculations are laid out here so any figure can be checked against the Census Bureau sources above.