New Jersey Is Now More Diverse Than New York, Census Data Shows

NEW JERSEY — The Garden State is getting increasingly diverse, with the number of people who identify as white alone declining by more than 15 percent — nearly 1 million people — in the last decade, according to 2020 census data.

Data shows that New Jersey is the seventh most diverse state in the country, flipping positions with New York from the 2010 census.

In New Jersey, 55 percent of the state’s population now identifies as white alone, a decline of 15.2 percent, or more than 900,000 people.

That figure isn’t unique to what the census found in 2020, with only 8 states seeing a rise in the population of white people over the last decade. In fact, the population of white people across the country declined from 2010 to 2020 by a mark of 8.6 percent, over 19 million people.

But officials say the reason for this change could actually be more about the way data was collected for the most recent census.

“As the country has grown, we have continued to evolve in how we measure the race and ethnicity of the people who live here,” said Nicholas Jones, director and senior advisor for race and ethnicity research and outreach at the Census Bureau.

“Today’s release of 2020 Census redistricting data provides a new snapshot of the racial and ethnic composition and diversity of the country. The improvements we made to the 2020 Census yield a more accurate portrait of how people self-identify in response to two separate questions on Hispanic origin and race, revealing that the U.S. population is much more multiracial and more diverse than what we measured in the past.”

The census uses what officials call the Diversity Index to track the uptick in diversity happening across the country in the last decade. According to officials, that metric is used “to measure the probability that two people chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups.”

Census data shows that New Jersey is getting more and more diverse, with a number of counties ranking within the top 100 most diverse in the country.

Middlesex County is the most diverse according to the newly released data, followed closed by Essex County, then Hudson, Union and Mercer Counties.

In 2010, only one New Jersey county — Essex County — featured a population in which the largest racial or ethnic group was non-white. Essex County’s largest group of people identify as Black, the same as in 2010, but the population of Hispanic and Latino people has surpassed white people in Passaic County in 2020, a new development.

But even in counties with a majority of people who identify as white, there is a rise in diversity.

Though the largest racial and ethnic group in Bergen County remains white, the gap has shrunk significantly in the last decade. According to the census data, 53.6 percent of the population is white in 2020, as opposed to 62.5 percent in 2010.

Only Ocean County saw a rise in people who identify as white alone at a mark of 1.8 percent, census data shows.

The state saw a modest rise in people who identify as Black alone (14,944) and Native Hawaiian alone (490 people) but a large jump in people who identify as American Indian or Native Alaskan alone (22,160) and Asian alone (224,364). New Jersey saw the second-largest jump in the U.S. of people who identified as American Indian or Native Alaskan alone, the data shows.

The census also published nationwide highlights from the data collected, which included:

• “The White population remained the largest race or ethnicity group in the United States, with 204.3 million people identifying as White alone. Overall, 235.4 million people reported White alone or in combination with another group. However, the White alone population decreased by 8.6% since 2010.
• The Two or More Races population (also referred to as the Multiracial population) has changed considerably since 2010. The Multiracial population was measured at 9 million people in 2010 and is now 33.8 million people in 2020, a 276% increase.
• The “in combination” multiracial populations for all race groups accounted for most of the overall changes in each racial category.
• All of the race alone or in combination groups experienced increases. The Some Other Race alone or in combination group (49.9 million) increased 129%, surpassing the Black or African American population (46.9 million) as the second-largest race alone or in combination group.
• The next largest racial populations were the Asian alone or in combination group (24 million), the American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination group (9.7 million), and the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone or in combination group (1.6 million).
• The Hispanic or Latino population, which includes people of any race, was 62.1 million in 2020. The Hispanic or Latino population grew 23%, while the population that was not of Hispanic or Latino origin grew 4.3% since 2010.”

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