[ardecila]

I hate getting this worked up over yearly ACS estimates. Even the best sampling techniques still run into problems capturing changes of small magnitude. The argument over gain vs loss is totally stupid on a year-to-year basis when the Census Bureau repeatedly has to issue revisions and essentially admits that their data is full of holes.

I don't blame the media for trying to push ACS estimates as news when so many people now are looking for information, from citizens to politicians to real estate investors and business owners, but the Census Bureau really should be the adult in the room here and emphasize that ACS estimates are highly flawed.

Sorry guys, I think we'll just have to wait until 2022 to get the real story about Chicago's population change in the 2010s... clearly the magnitude of the change, whether it's a gain or loss, is small enough that it can't be measured reliably by the ACS. The overall popuolation is basically stagnant or very slow growth/loss, even though the words "stagnant" and "slow" don't really capture the fact that we do have large inflows and outflows, they just happen to be roughly equal.