Census Worker

What is a Census Worker?

Duties

The census worker must perform a number of essential duties including:

• Conduct research in assigned areas after reviewing field site and establishing an effective route for travel.
• Conduct interviews with residents in the neighborhood and assist them with completing a census form accurately.
• Interact with residents by helping them interpret the census form and answering any questions regarding the details needed for census taking.
• Update or correct any discrepancies in existing census data, e.g. if a house is no longer occupied or cannot be considered a household.

Day In The Life

If you are an aspiring census worker, you should be willing to commute door to door, meeting residents in a local community at their homes before or after the 2020 census is mailed. It is your job to make sure that people are correctly filling up their census forms and mailing them in a timely manner. You may have to do frequent visits to residences in order to explain why the census is conducted and record the responses given by people. In addition, your day can include organizing and storing the submitted forms correctly, mailing them, etc.

In their daily work, census workers have to be undertake asking a wide range of questions, some of which may make individuals uncomfortable. For instance, questions may involve a person’s ethnic origins, income range, marital status or place of birth. The federal government uses this type of data to make large-scale policy or budget changes. While responses are usually kept confidential, census workers will have to face situations where individuals are unwilling to provide an answer. All the data collected in relation to census information, as well as records of time taken, expenses and miles traveled by census takers are reported to a U.S. Census Bureau crew leader.

Typical work schedule

The US Census Bureau often employs different people to help with the constitutional mandatory nationwide count of US citizens every 10 years. Accordingly, the majority of these jobs are temporary with the payment based on the hours registered or the number of people surveyed. There are still some permanent full-time jobs related to the long-term administration of the bureau. These jobs follow the regular schedule of 40-50 hours per week. Temporary jobs include working as census taker / enumerator where they work in the field interviewing people and collecting information from a specified district with accuracy. It does not require specific degrees, but it is quite time-consuming, exhausting and requires longer working hours. The permanent jobs include working as a geographer who prepare maps and other instructions for the census takers as well as statisticians / analysts who have to collect, analyze and make specific reports about the collected data. The permanent positions follow the standard working hours except on some occasions when longer hours may be required to meet specific deadlines like during the census year.

Projected job growth

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not provide specific information about the employment of various census workers. However, it is noted that the overall employment of statisticians is expected to increase by 33 % from 2019 to 2029 which is much faster than other jobs. For other temporary positions, it is hard to make a prediction because they are in high demand only twice in a decade. On the other hand, there will be few opportunities for the permanent positions within the Bureau. However, there may always be a room for advancement to full-time permanent worker for the Census Bureau especially for those who have the proper education as a college degree on statistics and enough hands-on experience with the required specialty within the Census Bureau.

Typical Employers

Census workers work for the federal government, specifically working for the US Census Bureau. However, their skills can also be employed for other purposes within the federal government besides the general census, like administrating different polls and reporting specific data on multiple matters that may affect the public. This can also be of high demand during the various elections in the country when polls are greatly valued.