Counting Down: Local office opens as Census officials get ready for 2010

Credit: Journal Photo by Walt Unks

Information on jobs is available at the office.

By: Wesley Young | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: December 16, 2009

The U.S. Census Bureau will hire more than 1,000 people in the area to help carry out field work for the 2010 census, officials said yesterday during an open house for the bureau's Winston-Salem office.

Census workers and local officials also will be trying to make sure that everyone gets counted.

At stake is the distribution of about $400 billion in federal money that is awarded to states and communities based on census data.

"We take it extraordinarily serious in Winston-Salem," Mayor Allen Joines said, telling an audience that Winston-Salem has twice disputed Census Bureau estimates of the city's population and has won each time.

Joines said that a local committee that is helping to ensure a complete count will make special efforts to make sure that typically undercounted areas get extra help. Joines said that black males and Hispanics are among those that the census tends to miss.

The Census Bureau will mail forms to 130 million addresses in early March. Census Day is April 1, 2010. Those who don't mail back their forms will first get a replacement form, then an in-person follow-up visit if they don't return that form.

That's when the jobs of the field workers will begin, officials said. But now is the time to apply, they added, since applicants must go through testing before they are hired. The jobs are temporary and involve 20 to 36 hours of work a week, for five to 10 weeks. The positions pay $13.50 an hour.

Nationwide, the head count will require the hiring of 24,000 people, officials said yesterday.

J. Kenneth White, the manager of the local Census Bureau office, said that workers will strive to "count everybody, count them where they live, and count them only once."

Wayne Hatcher, the regional Census Bureau director from Charlotte, said that as the new year starts, people will hear more about the importance of filling out census forms. There are plans to run advertising campaigns and send information out through the schools.

"It is one of those events that sort of builds to a crescendo," he said.

The local Census Bureau office is at 450 W. Hanes Mill Road. To apply for a job with the bureau, people can go to www.2010censusjobs.gov or call 866-861-2010.

Dave Plyler, the chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, was one of the local officials on hand for the formal opening of the office.

"If we want to improve lives in our county it takes dollars," Plyler said.

wyoung@wsjournal.com

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