The Census Project Blog

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

Sometimes you just want to shake our esteemed senators and representatives, and ask where they have been, lo, these past few years, while the Census Bureau has been painstakingly putting together the hundreds of operational building blocks that make a decennial census. When it’s time to execute the count, pull out one block and watch the rest scatter.

Lawmakers seem not to care. Add a question to the form months before the mailing begins? Only “bureaucrats” can’t figure out how to do it, according to one thoughtful senator. Now here comes another eleventh-hour idea, one that appears to be well-intentioned but is woefully tardy and improperly aimed.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and three colleagues wrote this week to Commerce Department chief Gary Locke, suggesting that the upcoming decennial count offers a chance to help the millions of Americans without jobs. The Census Bureau, they proposed, should give a “hiring preference” to people whose unemployment benefits are about to expire. To identify these folks, the bureau should start recruiting and even administering the hiring test at unemployment offices.

Intriguing concept. The Census Bureau is about to hire upwards of one million temporary workers to carry out the enumeration next year. A mini-stimulus program at our fingertips!

But, hell-O! Didn’t these senators know, say, nine months ago that the nation was facing an unemployment crisis? Did they have to wait until the bureau launched its meticulous hiring plan to ask Secretary Locke to change the whole strategy? No ideas for how the Census Bureau will get around civil service requirements to rank applicants according to their test scores. (And who cares if they hire the most qualified people anyway?) No thoughts about how applicants with veterans’ preference would fit into the picture. No reflection about how people hoping to supplement their income from low wage jobs with census employment might feel about being passed over, even if they score well on the test. The country’s greatest deliberative body need not sweat the details. Just brainstorm ways to address a national crisis, send a letter, put out a press release, and let the Census Bureau figure it out.

People, let’s get this straight: It is too late to make any major changes to census procedures without putting the entire operation at risk. Senior Census Bureau managers have to keep their eyes on the ball and make sure each component of the nation’s most complex domestic exercise is carried out properly and on time. Mollifying 535+ members of Congress who haven’t been paying attention for the past nine years, only weeks before the great national tally starts, isn’t part of the equation.

The Census Bureau has, in fact, been reaching out to people who are unemployed, encouraging them to apply for temporary positions. But the census is not a jobs program. I’ll say it over and over: There is one goal, and that is to get the most accurate and representative count of the population possible. For all other policy objectives, please look elsewhere for a real solution.

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Quote of the Week: “I learned you should count everyone in your family – except animals.” 7-year old Harshada Seelam, Gateway Math and Science Elementary School, St. Louis, Missouri (as quoted in a 12/2/09 St. Louis Post Dispatch article on Census Director Robert Groves’ visit to the school the previous day). Way to go, Harshada … and apologies to pet lovers everywhere!