Annual

The communities census takes place every year in January and February. The collection is carried out by INSEE interviewers who visit establishments and organize the deposit and the withdrawal of the questionnaires which are dropped and picked up once filled out.

The French census covers Metropolitan France, DOMs and the overseas collectivities of Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
Mayotte and overseas communities of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the Wallis and Futuna Islands carry out general censuses every five years.

Census surveys are annual.
The census provids results based on information collected during the five most recent annual surveys.

Individual

The population census takes place each year :

• In 20% of the communes with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

• In a sample of 8% of the dwellings in the communes with more than 10,000 inhabitants.

In communes with less than 10,000 inhabitants, communities are listed exhaustively for the year concerned by the census of the commune.

In most communes of over 10,000 inhabitants, communities of all the entire commune are all listed the same year, once every five years. In 26 communes with over 10,000 inhabitants, the communities census is organized over several years (from two to five years).