Demographic Data

A federally conducted or funded program should consider assessing the number or proportion of limited English proficient (LEP) persons from each language group in its service area to determine appropriate language assistance services. Below are federal government and non-governmental sources of language data that can assist in assessing the LEP communities in your service area. These are a sampling of the resources that may be useful and are not necessarily endorsed by the Department of Justice or by the Federal Interagency Working Group on LEP.

Federal Government and Non-Government Demographic Data

Source	Data Available	Related Resources
U.S. Census Bureau	Decennial Census	Decennial Data on Language Use
	American Community Survey (ACS)	ACS, 2006-2010 5-Year Language Estimates
	American Factfinder
U.S. Department of Education	National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)	Build a Table: ELL / LEP Students by State
	Fast Facts	Children Who Speak a Language Other Than English at Home
U.S. Department of Labor	2000 U.S. Census Special Tabulation on LEP Status	Evaluation of LEP and Hispanic Worker Initiative (2010)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	Snap Shots of State Population Data (Top Five Languages)
Source	Data Available	Related Resources
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)	Limited English Proficient Individuals in the United States: Number, Share, Growth, and Linguistic Diversity (December 2011)	MPI National Center on Immigration Policy, Language Portal
Modern Language Association (MLA)	MLA Language Map	MLA Language Map Data Center
Fair Data	English Language Proficiency of Spanish Speaking Population	ESL Spanish Speaker Mapper