Under the new legislation – the Statistics and Census (Jersey) Law – Statistics Jersey, which was previously called the States Statistics Unit, has greater powers to request information from departments which hold population data, such as the Social Security Department and Education.
The team now hopes to publish reports more frequently and produce population estimates every quarter in an ‘e-census’, where the results would be published online, as has been the case in Guernsey since 2015.
A statement released by Statistics Jersey says: ‘[We] hope, in particular, to be able to develop an e-census, whereby administrative data held by government departments is used to supplement traditional census methods in order to count the resident population of Jersey.’
The Island’s next official full census is due to take place in 2021, while the last was in 2011. It was found, seven years ago, that 97,887 people were living in Jersey but it is now estimated that the population exceeds 104,000.
