Census Workers Point Out Deficiencies in Current Operation

The Census director, Dr. Robert Groves, posted a kickoff letter for the Census workers as they head out to count those that did not return their census forms.  The letter is the stuff a cheer leading boss of 50,000+ new hires might give and didn’t immediately strike me as newsworthy, then I started reading the comments from the census workers (called “enumerators”).  Two comments really struck me as relevant to current events and reflected the attitude of the current administration.

First, “scott” points out that they are having trouble finding people to do this job because even with ~10% unemployment, people might not need the work:

They are still having problems with finding people who will do the enumerator job, and training is still going on. I am still in training, and usually it is during the day, and anyone with a full-time job is not going to take a week off to train for part-time. Also, people on unemployment (I am one)sometimes feel they make more money on unemployment (I would) than working for the census..

Shock..  With unemployment benefits being extended into eternity, those less-motivated would rather the handout than real work.  What about the entry on your resume?  The possibility to network and find job opportunities – perhaps even in … meh .. the government.   There have been numerous studies that show the longer and higher quality that unemployment benefits are, the longer that people go unemployed – here’s some reality-based statistical proof to those studies.

Further down, I found that turnover may be higher-than-expected as “arlene” points out a strange re-hiring practice:

Having trouble finding people….my daughter was hired and did the part where they went out in the middle of the night looking for homeless people, going to soup kitchens and shelters, etc… Although her supervisor highly recommended her to continue with the door to door part, NONE of the enumerators were kept on. They hired all new people..

Already trained, with some experience, enumerators were left hanging for .. new hires?  Why the turnover?  Does it improve how many enumerators they hired?  Does it reflect positively in the May/June employment figures?  Only time will tell and just trying to answer those questions off of a single blog post is something I’ll leave for the folks at NBC.