The Census Project said that the house and senate appropriations leaders should pass an anomaly in the funding bills for the 2022 fiscal year to provide the Census Bureau with an additional $1.1bn to cover key operations.

Anomaly funding relates to requests by the White House for additional funding from congress for government departments, and the White House has warned that the bureau’s activities will be negatively impacted if more money is not made available.

There have been repeated calls for funding for the bureau to be increased, taking into account the additional workload at the bureau and to allow it keep up with technological developments.

The Census Bureau carried out the 2020 census last year, and the Census Project claims that funds to support the bureau’s activities have been depleted due to conducting the census during Covid-19, with an economic census also currently taking place.

Howard Fienberg, co-director of the Census Project, said: “The Census Bureau conducts over 100 surveys a year providing the nation with reliable data on the nation’s health, housing, economy, and demographic characteristics.

“This anomaly is critical to ensuring the continued delivery of this vital data.”

Mary Jo Hoeksema, co-director of the Census Project, said: “We urge the appropriators to make sure there is a continuous, uninterrupted delivery to the nation of the bureau’s trusted data, particularly in these challenge times of an economic downturn paired with a pandemic.”