Understanding the New Census Time-Series Updates in mySidewalk

mySidewalk has released a major enhancement to Census time-series data to help users build more accurate, trusted stories about community change. The updates added: 

1. Two historical ACS 5-year estimates 
2. A new ACS 1-year estimate time-series option
3. A clearer separation of ACS estimates and Decennial Census data
4. Behind-the-scenes updates to projections and time-series organization

These changes improve clarity, consistency, and the usefulness of time-series analysis, expand the amount of historical data available, and align all Census time-series options with statistical best practices.

What's New

Expanded Historical ACS 5-Year Data

We added two historical American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, giving users access to a deeper timeline of community trends.

These data include the 2010-2014 and the 2015-2019 5-year estimates. 

This enhancement helps you:

• See multi-year patterns with greater clarity
• Better understanding of long-range structural changes
• Show accurate and detailed time-series analyses

New ACS 1-Year Time-Series Option

mySidewalk now includes American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates (2016-2019, 2021-2024) where available.

 ACS 1-year data provide:

• More timely, year-over-year insights
• Faster detection of emerging changes
• A more responsive picture of short-term conditions

These updates are available for nation, state, county, metropolitan and micropolitan areas, and select places if the population is 65,000 people or larger.

Data from this source will not automatically recalculate for your custom boundary.

Increased Time-Series Visualizations

The ACS 5-year and 1-year additions dramatically increase the number of indicators that support trend visualization from 139 to more than 5,000 providing exponentially more options for time-series visualizations. 

These indicators will calculate to your custom geography.   

Updated Time-Series Structure

As part of the update to ACS 5-year projections, Decennial Census values now appear in their own time-series category for easier interpretation.

To support clearer trend interpretation, you will now see three separate time-series options:

1. ACS 1-year estimates
2. ACS 5-year estimates
3. Decennial Census

This separation removes ambiguity and ensures consistency across all data visualizations.

Learn more about the difference between ACS 1-year and ACS 5-year estimates, and best practices for when to use which data → here!

Updated Projected ACS Estimates

We removed 2024, 2026, and 2028 projected time element data from the platform. Remaining projected time elements for Census data are 2030 and 2032. 

Existing visualizations using 2024, 2026, or 2028 projected time elements have been reverted to the current 5-Year ACS time element. 

These updates are available for all geographies, and data from this source will automatically recalculate for your custom boundary.

How Existing Reports and Dashboards are Affected

Your current dashboards and reports will remain the same. Only time series visualizations that were set to Auto-Update changed. 

If Auto-Update is enabled, the time series will switch to ACS 5-year estimates by default, following Census best practices.

Otherwise, your existing settings will remain untouched.

Why We Made These Updates

The goal is to bring mySidewalk’s Census data structure in line with statistical best practices and to give users the strongest possible foundation for analyzing change over time.

These improvements:

• Expand what customers can measure
• Improve accuracy and clarity in visualizations
• Enable new use cases for dashboards, reports, Seek, and Sidekick
• Strengthen long-term comparability across data releases

These efforts ensure your time-series data remains accurate, usable, and aligned with best practices going forward.