I don’t know why but it’s always been something I’ve been interesting in trying. Back in 2019 I applied for a part-time position with the 2020 Census. They called me for an interview but it didn’t work out because they actually said they needed me to be full-time, so I declined because I didn’t want to leave my job. Anyway, those of you who worked on a Census, what was the experience like?
16 comments
Know someone who did.
Just knock door to door, fill paperwork/take phone calls in the car, revisit homes that you missed/didn’t answer…if they don’t want to answer, you just talk to neighbors to get an accurate estimate on said household.
Yes! I worked the 2000 census in a rural area. The big draw for me at the time was that I could take my toddler along.
How was it? Kind of a PITA. I have no idea how it works now, but then, you were given a folder of addresses and a timeframe (“make your own schedule, but have these done by this date” type of thing). Then you were knocking on doors and writing down answers or noting that the residents either weren’t home or didn’t answer the door. Once a week, my supervisor came to my house to collect the forms and give me a new set.
No but I’ve worked WITH censuses quite a bit. I used to do phone support at Ancestry.com’s headquarters and worked there when the 1940 census rolled out for public access, learned all about the fire that destroyed the 1890 census, etc.
Nope. The only one I know was a great great grandfather back in the 1850’s. He was well known in the Irish community and his wife’s family had immigrated in the 1700’s so no one was gonna shoot him for coming onto their property. I have his original ledgers; page after page of -Place of Birth : Ireland. Thirty miles east most of the people were born in Germany (Ohio and Cincinnati)
My retired parents worked it in 2010 and 2020. Early on it is kind of interesting because they were travelling around the area to a bunch of different places. As the process grinds on they end up going back to a number of places again and again that the Census Bureau hasn’t been able to secure an accurate response/result from. Like you drive 20 or 30 miles to some remote address in the woods that might or might not even exist. If it exists the resident would offer some sort of non-answer that wouldn’t allow the electronic system to mark the address as numerated/canvassed/surveyed (or whatever the technical term is), then they would drive to the next house which is 20 or 03 miles away and someone (maybe them again, maybe a different enumerator) would have to come back to the first address again later that week or the next.
There was such a shortage of workers in 2020 that in the later weeks were offered pretty sizable as well as travel expenses and a per diem to travel to Memphis and Atlanta.
They indicated that there was a remarkable shift in how their neighbors in rural southwest Missouri received them in 2020 vs 2010.
I did it in 1990. It was a sweet gig for a college student between semesters. I got bit by a dog twice and a gun pulled on me once. A lot of fun.
My mom did. She’s been a full time mom for a long time but we were all out of the house so she has done it as a part time gig. She doesn’t really need the cash but she likes talking to people.
I did it for the 2010 census. I liked it. Good money, and all the places I had to go were within a few blocks of my apartment.
I met an old married couple who were Holocaust survivors. An Eastern European building superintendent casually suggested I slip him a bribe in exchange for information about people who lived in his building.
I worked the 2010 Census.
It was great work at the time. I had been unemployed for over a year, so it was nice to be working. It paid Federal employee wages, so that was a big plus. And I managed to get hired one level above the bottom rung, and managed to stay on for about six months.
Here’s the thing, though: the 2010 Census was awesome because the economy was kinda still crappy after 2008. There were a lot of former engineers, and public school teachers and middle-aged professionals who were super happy to have a 40-hour-a-week job that was flexible enough they could still job hunt. I’m really not sure what the workforce on the 2020 Census looked like, but I’m guessing it was a lot less high-quality candidates and a lot more folks who struggle with regular employment.
I managed crews doing field work. I handed out assignments, and reviewed their paperwork every week. The urban and surburban stuff was fine. The rural stuff… less so. “I want you to walk up to the door, knock, and tell them you’re from the government and want to ask them questions” is not *quite* a formula for success when dealing with rural folks that don’t get a lot of regular visitors, don’t like people dropping by unannounced, and aren’t super trusting of the government in general. Still, only one person on my crew had to deal with a person brandishing a firearm, and they just pulled out the pistol and cocked it, but let the person ask their questions, so it was a net win.
It had other stresses that were basically baked in to the process. Imagine you have a massive undertaking you have to do. But you’re only doing it once every ten years. So there’s not much infrastructure, technology changes wildly from one run to the next, many of the people who are doing this work have never worked for government at all, and almost all of them are short-term contractors. You’re pretty much guaranteed to just swing from one crisis to the next until you reach the finish line.
Yes, I worked for the 2010 census. I only worked part time as an “innumerator”. Basically, worked from a list of people who had not returned their forms and I knocked on doors to get people to fill it out. I was in a suburb so it wasn’t too bad but some people flipped me off, fought me on gov’t policies and one guy just answered the door with a shotgun. Not super fun. I did get to see a bunch of people who I went to high school with. That part was fun. It’s interesting work, but it’s not for the feint of heart.
I worked the 2010 Census, first manning an information desk and then as a clerk inputting the data.
It was frustrating. We were the least-behind office in the region, but we were still behind. The reason we were behind is because only two clerks could be inputting data at a time. We had enough computers; the bottleneck was the database, which could only host a limited number of connections, so they limited each office to two.
That would have been alright, except we worked in a windowless room that got hot, especially if multiple people were in it. Because we were behind, we were ordered to hire more clerks. Soon the room was more full and more hot, and we were still behind, because that wasn’t the bottleneck.
As we fell further and further behind target –though still leading the region, mind you– we were ordered to hire more and more clerks. Eventually, as one of the more senior clerks, I spent all my workday training new clerks to do the job. But only the two most senior clerks did actual data entry, because they were the fastest and most experienced with the system. The rest manually triaged the data so those two could be as streamlined as possible… a day of work to shave off a few seconds at the bottleneck.
Really awful in my limited experience.
I tried the job mostly out of boredom: it was a slow time at my normal job and I had plenty of money, so … some time out of the house I suppose?
The census gave me a crazy long list of people I had to visit, but that got old very quickly. About half the names and addresses were straight-up wrong, and a good portion of the others thought I was some creepy stalker.
The census gives a worker a lot of personal information about the people you’re assigned to visit, and after your 5th time waking up some stranger who’s mother has just died? Eeeh, you kind of want to “nope” out of that job.
My “last time” was a dude who put a shotgun in my face and yelled for me to go away.
I had expressed interest in doing it in 2020 for some cash and something to put on a résumé, but because I was still in school at the time, I wasn’t sure how well it would mesh with my schedule so I backed out. I don’t know how Covid affected it so it was probably an even bigger hassle than I thought it would have been.
I worked as an enumerator for the 2010 Census. After your training, you recieve a list of addresses that need to be visited from your supervisor. You drive around and visit these places and fill out the census form with them. After you’ve handled all your addresses you recieve another list from your supervisor. Rinse and repeat until finished. A given group will work a specific geographic area. Decent work, not great if you dislike interacting with strangers.
You meet all kinds of people. A lot of those who need to be visited are ESL and may not know about the Census. Others filled them out but they for whatever reason didn’t go through or came in late. Others are worried about giving out personal information. Most people were nice enough.
When I did it we would actually fill out the paper forms. I had an encounter with a 2020 enumerator and I believe they were doing things electronically.
That’s the basic gist of it. If you want to know something more specific you can ask.
I probably know a couple dozen people to varying degrees who have worked for the Census Bureau. Most seem to really like their jobs. You’d probably get more responses at r/fednews.
I did part time work for the 2000 Census.
I’d get a packet of forms and addresses, then spend a few hours knocking on doors and filling out the forms for whoever wanted to answer.
They offered me full time work because of how behind they were, but I already had that covered, so same as you I turned that down.