White Residents No Longer Majority In Essex County

Although Essex County’s population of white residents is growing slightly from the past two decades, it is still one of 78 in the United States in which no single racial or ethnic group is a majority, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, whites have made up less than half of the total population in Essex County for over 20 years.

Recent census statistics:

• 2000 – 44.4 percent white
• 2010 – 42.5 percent white
• 2013 (estimated) – 49.9 percent white

“In the United States as a whole, the white share of the population is declining as Hispanic, Asian and black populations grow,’’ the Pew study claimed. “But the shift to a more diverse nation is happening more quickly in some places than in others.”

In New Jersey, white residents are also no longer the majority in Middlesex, Cumberland, Passaic, and Union counties.

“From 2000 to 2013, 78 counties in 19 states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina, flipped from majority white to counties where no single racial or ethnic group is a majority,” according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

The study focused on counties with a total population of at least 10,000. In 1960, 85 percent of the nation’s residents were white, but by 2060, the U.S. population is expected to be 43 percent white, according to the center.

“Even though the white share of the U.S. population is falling, non-Hispanic whites remain the nation’s largest racial or ethnic group, accounting for 63 percent of all Americans. And whites are at least half of the population in 89 percent of the nation’s counties with at least 10,000 residents,’’ the study said.