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A once-in-a-decade job opportunity is here for jobless Americans who are struggling through the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
Across the country, the 2010 census will require 1.2 million temporary workers to conduct the decennial head count, which begins this month.
Most of the jobs, about 700,000, will require knocking on doors for six to 10 weeks from May to July to find people who didn't mail in their census questionnaires. Hiring is going on now.
"We want to encourage people to get in the system now," said Jenna Steormann Arnold, media specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau in Central Texas, adding that some workers can start much sooner than May.
"The majority of the work and training will start in the beginning of April," she said.
The massive hiring effort will require more than 3 million job applicants, and the U.S. Census Bureau is targeting unemployed workers to find them.
At a news briefing recently, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said that his agency would advertise the job openings in unemployment offices as well as in the local media so that "everyone who needs a job knows about the job opportunities."
"We want to hire people in the neighborhoods where they'll work," Groves said. "We've learned over the decades that hiring people who know the neighborhoods, who know the streets, who know the lifestyles and the goings and comings of neighborhoods works better."
Steormann Arnold said the areas where the local census office is most in need of census workers include "‘apartment city' along Riverside and (Interstate) 35, some of the student housing in west and north campus and East Austin and western Travis County."
"You work where you live because we need that local knowledge," Steormann Arnold said.
The recession is affecting the 2010 census in several ways. With nationwide unemployment around 10 percent, officials are seeing better-qualified applicants.
On the downside, however, record foreclosures and job losses have forced millions of people to leave their homes and change their addresses, which means they will be harder for census workers to find.
Because of this, the bureau doesn't expect to match the results of the 2000 census, in which 67 percent of households completed and returned questionnaires. The bureau has estimated that nearly 48 million households will require follow-up contacts or visits this time.
The states with the largest populations will require the most workers. California is expected to hire more than 118,000 workers by September, while New York state, Texas and Florida each are projected to employ more than 90,000.
The pay will vary widely by location because of the difference in the cost of living. Workers in Olympia, Wash., will make $12.75 an hour, for example, while the hourly rate is $13.25 in Columbia, S.C., and $13.75 in Lexington, Ky.
The pay jumps to $15 an hour throughout South Florida and in Sacramento and Fresno, Calif. In Raleigh, N.C., census workers will earn $16.25 an hour, while those in Tacoma, Wash., will make $17.50 an hour.
Read Full Story: http://www.statesman.com/jobs/career-center/feds-hiring-for-1-2feds-hiring-for-1-2-million-temporary-u-330249.html?cxtype=ynews_rss&imw=Y
Posted Wednesday, March 10th 2010 at 1:04PM
by: Elynor Moss
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Sunday, March 14th 2010 at 5:07PM
If you have any kind of run-in with Law Enforcement-even a Misdomeaner-you can forget about working fot the Census-A friend did everything he wastold to do and he was approved by the National Bureau-but his name was scratched off the Local (Southern) list AS "iNELIGIBLE OR NOT QUALIFIED"--
Gene Brown
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