New York City is reportedly the most linguistically diverse city on the planet — so it should not come as a surprise that a significant number of residents deal with limited English proficiency (LEP).

One recent and creative effort to gauge existing support of LEP New Yorkers came in the form of a Language Access Secret Shopper Program, in which interns went “undercover” to interact with staff at New York City social services agencies.

Now, an August 2024 report by New York State’s Office of Language Access has quantified and analyzed data on that population. OLA, which launched in October 2022, is tasked with ensuring that state agencies comply with New York language access laws.  

The ultimate goal of the report is enhanced insight into the needs of New York’s residents with LEP, and how state agencies might best accommodate them.

Far and away, the highest proportion of New York’s LEP population  —  72.8% or 1.8m people with LEP— live in New York City, which comprises five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan.

More specifically, within New York City, Queens has the most LEP residents (25.5% of the LEP population, approximately 0.64m people), followed by Brooklyn (21.9% or 0.55m people).

Nearly a quarter of a million LEP individuals live on Long Island (10.3%) or in the Hudson Valley (9.6%).

Growing Up vs. Growing Old, with LEP

The top five counties with the highest LEP populations are Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Nassau (on Long Island, and Manhattan. In each of these counties, the majority of LEP individuals are at least 45 years old.

The report groups the population into five age ranges: five-14 years old; 15-24 years old; 25-44 years old; 45-60 years old; and over 60 years of age. 

The LEP population was distributed remarkably evenly across the three oldest groups (25-44, 45-60, and 60+), each accounting for 28.4% of LEP residents. The two youngest groups made up just 7.4% and 6.9% of the population, respectively. 

Spanish, Chinese (an umbrella term the report uses to refer to a number of languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin, and other variants), and Russian all appeared in the top five languages spoken among all five age groups. However, the remaining languages in the top five varied by age group, and could include Yiddish, Bengali, Arabic, Korean, Haitian Creole, or Italian.

Spanish has the highest population with LEP for 25-44 year olds, while most Chinese- and Russian-speakers with LEP are over 60 or between 45-60 years old.

OLA suggests that New York State agencies, as well as language services providers, might refer to the report “to determine how to best deliver language services, including [the] method most accessible to represented groups, such as telephonic lines for older populations or social media for younger populations.”