or know anyone who did?
Tell me about working for the US Census, either in the field or office operations. Because, they are hiring 179 people in GR alone!
Do they try to place you in your own community? Or how does one avoid getting sent far afield but remain a candidate for hire?
All I need to apply is my DL, SS and to take a test or two, but they pay a pretty good hourly rate, what is the catch?
Tell me your ancedotes, the good the bad, the boring and the ugly!
Thx!
I worked for them when I graduated college and was looking for my first job. It’s pretty easy money and it’s pretty easy work, but you will be dealing with some total scumbags in the process. The sent me to the Eastside of Joliet which is a somewhat dicey part of town and was about 20-30 minutes away from where I lived. You keep your own time and keep your own hours which is nice and makes it easy to live your life while doing it. It gets repetitive as you have to go knocking on the same doors over and over again because they are either not home or not answering. You’ll end up sitting in some messy, dirty homes with the types of folks who can’t be bother to stop smoking and drinking long enough to fill out a simple form.
The money is very good for how easy the work is and the fact you can do it in your spare time, but you’ll be exposed to some of the less pleasant parts of society.
I’ve worked the field, like Omniscient, & manning a 800 number.
He’s basically right about the field, but the phone/paperwork jobs are pretty sweet.
i’m working for them now.
i’m an office clerk and so far so good.
pay is better on the outside jobs, but i like being indoors.
right now i’m in recruiting calling people to schedule them for the basic test. although i see data entry in my near future.
the job can last into 2010. the catch is: there aren’t any benefits and you only get paid for hours worked. if you are in the field you get reimbursed for travel and phone, and the clock starts when you walk out of your house and stops when you walk into your house.
go for it!
I was a manager for the Census in 2000(starting in late 1999). I was mainly in charge of a group of about 15 enumerators(census-takers), each of whom went out to take the census from low income(and often complicated) houses and non-responders(starting around April 2000).
Anyway, I earned $15.25 an hour in 2000, which was pretty good.
However, the government office was pathetic. Rarely have I seen a stereotype more fulfilled. All the permanent government workers barely lifted a finger at their jobs. The office was in a state of stable chaos. I know that is an oxi-morn, but it is the only way to describe it.
I had to monitor my wages extremely carefully. For the ~8 month period I worked there, they almost never went through carefully. I was on a straight-up 40 hour work week most of the time, too. I only worked overtime in the peak months.
It’s not a horrible job, but get used to government red-tape and wackiness.
I was an enumerator in the 2000 census. The pay was pretty decent - $11 or $12, I think. Also, we would get reimbursed for our mileage which was a sizable chunk of dough.
I really hated the job, though. Most houses were okay, but sometimes you would get a very difficult house and it would screw up your whole day.
One point of note, as a 22-23 year old white guy who had a reliable car and was 6’3" and 220 lbs (read: not terribly vulnerable) I seemed to always get sent to the least safe parts of town. There were a lot of little old ladies and part-time moms doing the job (usually poorly) and I’m pretty sure my regional manager hand picked the rougher and somewhat remote neighborhoods for me and the other recent college grad/high school graduates who happened to be male.
Be prepared.
Given my choice, I’d have chosen the field work as an enumerator. I was looking for a full-time job and had a pretty active social life at the time so being able to go out and work whenever it was convenient for me was a real bonus. I can’t say with any certainty, but I think the office jobs would be a little more rigidly managed and more of a 9-5 lifestyle. I know that had I been a little more desperate (read: not living with my folks) I could have worked many more hours than I did and really made a tidy sum.
I was an enumerator once. I agree with Omniscient. We went out in pairs, and one guy threatened to shoot us if we didn’t get off of his property. This was in the Mojave Desert, and there are some… interesting… people in the more remote areas. One place we went to was basically a bunch of shacks, and very few people spoke english. The place smelled of feces. (Not the house, but the whole ‘street’ – dirt road.)
The first part of the job was canvassing. We drove around with a big printout matching addresses with actual dwellings. After that we went out and helped people fill out their forms.
Pay was pretty good for the time. About 25% more than minimum wage. And we were paid mileage, which was easy to rack up in those wide-open spaces. If I didn’t have a regular job I wouldn’t mind doing it again.
We weren’t instructed to go out in pairs. I don’t think I even had contact info for anyone besides my manager, and I’m pretty sure the only time I spoke with her was when I was got my lists the first day. After that she just wanted our completed forms dropped off in her mailbox at the end of each week.
The pay was excellent for what it was. I think I was bringing in like $12-15/hour in 1999 plus substantial mileage, close to triple minimum wage at the time IIRC.
We did go out in pairs. Maybe it was because it was in the desert. What I was getting at is that I agree that you can be sent to some dicey areas – such as the hermit who threatened to shoot us.
I wonder if there are some state-by-state rules that change policies in some areas. Or maybe your manager just had a little more discretion than mine.
Thanks for all the replies, I wanted to use multiquote but I guess its chum now.
Anyway I am going for it. I missed the first appt I made. It was at the state employment office, I was wary of the cattle call too much like a day laborer’s position. Today I head to the actual census office for the 2 hour testing!
I wonder if they will want bodily fluids too! eek.
I am ok with driving out and about and cold calling on strangers, hopefully on the NE side of town and not SW. How much training is provided? Is it a flat hourly or are there commissions for each complete census?
I have worked in a field USDA office, and it drove me crazy the bureaucracy, the inertia, the isolation, the herd mentality of it all - but I can play that game.
Usually when does the canvassing start, Jan/Feb?
He didn’t want you to enumerate the captives held in his basement.
the local census offices are starting up in january. office workers get called up first, enum.s second.
your application gets put into the computer, and they start calling people as need arises. highest score, vet. preference first.
so far i haven’t been asked for bodily fluids. you are paid by direct deposit, you fill out a daily time sheet, and the money appears on wednesdays.
today, i start at the new lco. i’ve been at the regional for about 3 weeks. so far so good for me.
good luck.
Thanks for the bump! I took the test.
I went down to the local office and though the street directions were spot on, once I was inside the building, a factory converted to office lofts, I realized the testing may have begun before I walked in the door! Absolutely no signage on the 3rd floor and there were four cavernous hallways that stretched waaaaaaaaaay off in to the distance. Here was the vast impersonal dystopia ala Brazil that I feared!I took the second hall on the right, looked to my left and under ductwork was a hidden plain wooden door that in tiny letters read US Census. I wondered how may people frittered their time trying to find that damn door.
So about six of us made it on time to take the test. I think it was geared to seventh graders. 
The few math problems they included actually didn’t require one to figure them out, I just looked at the multiple choice answers (all the same)and chose the one with the right decimal placement! I had enough time to go back and check answers, good thing too because I found that I screwed up on a matching question. I also handed in my resume and that was that. Next I wait for a call to get started, I hope they call me back!
Every ten years the Census Bureau has to open up thousands of new offices and hire something like 200 thousand people to work them for just one or maybe two years. Then they have to close all those offices and wait for the next decade. This means that the local offices are not always the best addresses and the people that work there are not always the best trained because they have to hire and train a lot of people in a very short time. I think they are happy to find anyone with a pulse that can read, write and drive a car- so I wouldn’t worry about your ability to GET the job.
Yes, I hear they try to put you in your local neighborhood “when possible”. As someone else said, if you have a car and look like you can handle a tough job, you are going to get the tough job. So the catch is that this is a temp job, the office is temporary, the people you work with may not all be Harvard grads and a lot of the work involves visiting houses that may not be in the best neighborhoods.
The jobs themselves are varied. Some folks just work the office for a year or more. At different times the jobs may involve:
Don’t hesitate to ask for the work you want to do. If you are good at your job they probably need you. Good luck.
it is amazing how many people sign up for the test but don’t show up. i’m glad you got there. i’ve seen where we had 60 people scheduled and only 20 showed up.
hopefully you will get the call soon.
I was an enumerator for three summers as part of the summer jobs thing, 88-90.
It wasn’t too bad, as I lived in a fairly rural NW Ohio county at the time, and the mileage pay really added up.
The only thing that sucked was the second year my supervisor found I spoke some Spanish, so I also got tasked with doing the interviews at the housing compounds for the illegal aliens working on the commercial farms. THAT was less than fun. “No soy la migra. En verdad,” became my standard phrase of introduction.
The third year I got to go around to interview families that hadn’t returned their forms or had omitted data. Most of those were people who had gotten the uber-offensive “long” form, that demands all manner of personal data like detailed income, personal habits, etc. I didn’t try too hard to argue when people said, “It’s none of the government’s damn business,” since it isn’t.
Where do I go to apply? Assuming they hire old folk, that is. And can I do CCW?
you call the toll free number, touch tone your zip code, get scheduled for the test, and hope for the call.
we’ve had applicants that were born in the '20’s, so i don’t think that there is an age bias.
go for it!