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This spring has a hot new job: census worker. The Census Bureau is looking to fill some 1.2 million part-time positions as the government gears up for its once-a-decade count of every person living in the U.S. Most of those openings are for enumerators - people who go door to door to collect information from the roughly 35 million households that won't return their Census forms by mail. Considering the unemployment rate stands at 10% - much higher than in any other Census year since 1940 - prospective workers are turning out in droves. "The numbers who are applying...
...that rare bright spot on the employment front, we can thank the Constitution, which mandates that the government count its residents every 10 years. The Census Bureau isn't allowed to use statistical estimates in its gauge of the population, so if a household doesn't return the 10-question form that's due to arrive in the mail in March, an enumerator will show up in May, June or July to try to get the information in person...
...nationally. Last spring, the Census did run ads when it was hiring canvassers for the summer - people who walk up and down every block in the U.S. to verify each address. The Census was hoping to get 700,000 applications in order to fill 200,000 spots. Instead, the bureau received 1.2 million. (Those applicants will be considered for the new positions too.) This time around, says decennial recruiting chief Wendy Button, the Census will run advertisements only in areas where it anticipates having trouble filling positions, such as inner cities, extremely rural areas and neighborhoods with large percentages...
...morning of the first Friday in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the unemployment rate had fallen to 10% in November from 10.2% the month before. Hooray! Headlines heralded the unexpected drop. Stock prices surged. Enthused White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: "We're moving in the right direction...
This method of calculating unemployment was pioneered by the head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1878, and it has its merits. It's simple. It's straightforward. And it provides a pretty accurate count of those who really, really want jobs. But it also misses millions of people who may not be actively looking for a job but would happily take one if offered. Those ranks surely swell in a deep recession or during a time of economic turmoil that destroys entire job categories (like autoworker). The government's statisticians are aware of this, and since...