"Things change much more quickly," Waite said last week during a meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board. "If you only see the data once every 10 years, you can't manage" everything from government services to business advertising efficiently.

The ACS is circulated each month to 250,000 households; in 2005, 20,545 were in Utah. Annual estimates from the survey are currently available for places with populations of 65,000 or more. Starting in 2008 estimates will be available for places with populations of 20,000 or more and by 2010 will provide estimates for all localities as well as block groups, Waite said.

The timely data are also making it easier for planning the decennial census. For example, demographic profiles from 2009 will allow the Census Bureau to, for the first time, target areas to receive bilingual census forms.

It will also help them better account for missed populations, and to better survey people for the 2010 Census because their employees will not have to also juggle data from the long forms.

"We believe it will make our 10-year counts substantially more accurate," Waite said in the editorial board meeting. "We can do a lot to reduce errors."

The state is hoping the new survey will help the Census Bureau improve its methods of annual population estimates, said Robert Spendlove, Utah's top demographer.

Spendlove said the state is still considering a challenge of its 2006 population estimate but is working with the Census Bureau to resolve the difference of 65,000 people below state estimates. In the past, some counties and cities have successfully challenged what they called census underestimates. Perlich agreed the new survey could make the estimates more accurate because they have more information on migration, which is where the census has underestimated Utah's population in the past.

"Births and deaths are easy," she said. "Migrations are the whole art and science of population estimates."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com; jloftin@desnews.com