In 2010, the 23rd United States Census will be conducted, and hiring for this massive, two year-long effort is beginning now.
Tim Goggins of the U.S. Census Bureau's office in Worcester stopped by the Advocate offices last week to promote this recruitment effort. Soon, during this season of heightened activity for the census, his office will grow and spread across Western Massachusetts, with offices opening in Springfield and Pittsfield.
Now through the end of February, the Census Bureau will be offering tests at local community centers across the region to determine job eligibility and placement for applicants. There is a one-hour exam for potential supervisors and a half-hour exam for non-supervisory positions. In addition to exam grades, the census is looking for experience for the supervisory jobs, but previous qualifications are not required for the other positions.
"A couple hundred jobs are available for a couple years," Goggins said. Most are part-time positions. Most jobs pay from $12 to $15 per hour, but a few offer up to $18 per hour.
To find a time and place to take the exam, call 1-866-861-2010.
The United States Constitution mandates that every 10 years the government must fund a massive accounting of the country's population. The census requires those conducting it to contact as many families as possible directly, mostly by mail but often in person. As Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson conducted the first census in 1790 and found there to be 3,929,214 people living here.
In a democracy a lot hinges on quantifying the number of beating hearts that exist in a given area. In Massachusetts, which has been losing residents for some time, there is a potential threat involving how many seats the state gets in the House of Representatives and Electoral College. Places with more people get more representation in government and more funding, and are treated differently by the businesses and researchers who use the public data to make recommendations and decisions.
The general, aggregated data is made public the day the report is given to the president (Obama will get his on December 31, 2010), but all personal information is supposed to be kept confidential for 72 years. Guaranteeing this anonymity, the census hopes to include all residents, regardless of their citizenship, legal status or employment. Goggins explained that they don't want to know where or whether people work, but "where they rest their heads. Where they call home."
The project will be broken into two phases. This year teams will be in the field verifying addresses from the 2000 census, removing housing units that no longer exist and adding new ones. Since this phase doesn't require interaction with those being counted, it can be done at odd hours, when it's convenient, making the job work well for the under-employed, retired, or college students. As well as counting houses and apartment buildings and how many residents they have, the "listers" will be tallying college dorms, nursing and veterans' homes, and any other place people may dwell. Goggins is excited that this year for the first time workers will have hand-held computers to assist them in the field.
Next year, the second phase will begin with a mailing of the actual census questionnaires to the addresses verified the year before. Some complain about the cost of the mailing, Goggins said, but he pointed out that the greatest expense the census incurs is when the questionnaires aren't returned and a member of an "enumerator" team needs to visit a residence personally.
Over the years, the census has tried to recruit workers from as many minority and fringe groups as possible, hoping their grassroots approach will make people more comfortable and accurate with their information. While they've had success with this approach, each census encounters resistance from some groups who fear what the government might do with the information. There have been no recent reports of abuses, but between 1939 and 1941 the FBI created a "Custodial Detention index" using the census data, and this list was used in the internment of Japanese-Americans during the second World War.
Despite the dangers inherent in any massive collection of personal data, a democracy can't run fairly or efficiently without a solid notion of how many people are being represented by its government. Heaven knows what we may discover the Bush administration did with our census data hunting for terrorists, but without creditable data in the future there's a lot more we'll be missing. Got time? Need a job? Make it count.
To find the time and location of an upcoming census job exam, call 1-866-861-2010. For more information on the U.S. Census, visit www.census.gov.
