Recruiting for 2020 Census Tough When Unemployment is Low

Recruiting enough workers to fill the hundreds of thousands of temporary positions needed to take the 2020 Census won’t be easy, given the current economic climate, but the Census Bureau is more than up to the challenge.

For the decennial census, the Census Bureau will need a large and diverse workforce to follow up by phone or in person with households that do not respond to the questionnaire.

But, the lower the unemployment rate, the harder it can be to recruit.

Before the 2010 Census, unemployment was at its highest levels since the early 1980s. It peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2009 and hovered between 9.3 and 9.8 percent throughout 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Today’s environment is much different, with the unemployment rate down to 4.0 percent as of June 2018.

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