I noticed today at the library they are still doing tests for census takers. I was wondeirng how long will these census people be out knocking on people’s doors?
Obviously there is a time limit of some sort, when if you’re not counted, that’s tough luck.
Any idea when?
(Bolding mine.) http://2010.census.gov/2010census/
I think the final deadline for counting is the end of this year. So there’s still plenty of time.
When me and my wife rented an apartment in 1997 in Cedar Rapids, I had a census worker knock on my door for the 1990 census. Apparently, I was the first tenant who ever agreed to talk to them since 1990.
How does it work in my case: we rent a condo in the US but live overseas. We only use the condo in the winter and were not there on April 1 (the census asked how many people would be living there on 4/1).
We called and were told that we were not allowed to respond to the census because we don’t live in the US. However, no one would know that just by knocking on our door.
They do want to know if a house, condo, apartment, etc. is empty. Sometimes they will even go out to find the address is an empty lot.
I got the same information, but I filled the census out anyway. I figure that I’ve not qualified for a bona fide residence here yet, and that I can’t be homeless, so even though I wasn’t physically at my Michigan address on 1-Apr, we still lived there.
Door-to-door enumeration will start May 1st and go until sometime in August. Enumerators will try six times before giving up.
suranyi, December 31 is the deadline for the final report to hit President Obama’s desk, not a final deadline to submit the form or be counted by an enumerator, so if you haven’t filled out your form or been counted by a Census worker, you won’t be included, period.
From what I gathered on the first day of training last week (the other 3 days are tomorrow thru Fri), we will attempt to contact someone personally up to six times. However, after three attempts, we will be allowed to ask other people (neighbors, etc.) for info regarding occupants.
I will know more after tomorrow. This was just the general info we were given in between filling out mounds of employment related paperwork.
OK.
If a person does not respond to 6 communication attempts - 3 in person and 3 via phone - then the census worker has to go and ask that persons surrounding neighbors for the info.
If you couldn’t be bothered to mail the census back in, it is much easier for everyone to just to answer the door the first time.
It costs taxpayers about $60 for each visit by a census worker (this includes all the overhead). The actual census worker’s pay varies from place to place - starting at minimum hourly wage in places like Idaho.
90% of the time that’ll be true. However some of the forms only require a enumerator to attempt contact 5 times; some only 4. I wasn’t told the specific reason for this, but the Bureau might be doing some field testing for efficiency purposes.
Like it was said earlier, enumerators may be out in the street into August. My Local Census Office plans on closing up shop on July 31st, but some other ones might be later. I also heard some murmurs from the LCO that they were actually ahead of schedule as far as the processing of information. Other offices might be running a little slower.
Our census takers at work - or why the gov’t spends so much money.
I live in a city in Western Washington, and dutifully filled out my census form the first day it arrived. However, I also have a small vacation cabin on an island in the San Juans that I visit probably every two or three weeks.
Now this island is private, and has a total of three full time residences on it. However, there are roughly 80 cabins on it, and these, except for the three aforementioned ones, are used basically for weekends only. This information is extremely easy to get merely by asking the caretaker.
The census taker boated out from the nearest city (about 8 miles across salt water), and proceeded to visit every cabin on the island and leave his forms. He was told the status of the cabins, but replied that he had to leave a form at each one, no matter whether it was used full time or not.
It will be interesting to see whether he makes six separate trips out there.
He doesn’t or at least shouldn’t have to make the additional trips out there. If its apparent that the cabins are and were vacant on Census Day(April 1st), he should go talk to the caretaker and confirm that each cabin was on vacant on April 1st and then proceed to fill out a questionnaire for cabin listing them as vacant. The caretaker, since he knows the status of each cabin, can act as a proxy.