MARCH 4, 2020 — The U.S. Census Bureau is beginning its selection process to hire up to 500,000 census takers for the 2020 Census.

“America has answered the call, and is ready to answer the 2020 Census,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “With unemployment rates at historic lows, recruiting is a big challenge. I congratulate our recruitment staff, and our community partners for recruiting more than 2.6 million applicants nationwide.”

Beginning in May 2020, census takers, also known as enumerators, will go door to door across the country to count people in households that have not responded to the census online, by phone or on paper. To have a robust hiring pool, the Census Bureau seeks four or more applicants for each position.

“We have more applicants than our estimates suggest we need to hire in every office,” said Census Bureau Director Dr. Steven Dillingham. “We will continue to accept applications nationwide to deepen the bench of qualified workers. We will optimize our recruitment efforts to where they will be most effective. Our goal is to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible while minimizing movement of staff between offices.”

Tests of 2020 Census operations conducted in 2018 demonstrated significant productivity gains over 2010 Census operations because of the deployment of new technology and route optimization.

The Census Bureau will continue to accept applications at 2020census.gov/jobs through the end of May.

Applicants for 2020 Census jobs should be prepared to answer calls from Census Bureau employees starting Saturday March 7, 2020, to conduct a phone interview. Please Note : Potential hires will be contacted by telephone from one of our 248 area census offices nationwide. Most positions begin work in early May.

The Census Bureau will make job offers over the phone, and selected candidates will receive a letter by email providing instructions for scheduling an appointment to be fingerprinted. The candidate will receive further instructions once cleared for work. Census Bureau staff will work with selected candidates to ensure they are progressing through the onboarding process.

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