MONTEREY — Census officials are holding a job fair in Monterey to staff the upcoming Census 2020 count in Monterey County, a count that is critical to the county but is not made easy by the fear the current political climate is instilling in many local residents.

Getting an accurate count is important because census statistics are used to determine the number of seats each state holds in the U.S. House of Representatives and direct state, local and federal lawmakers on allocating billions of dollars in federal funds to local communities every year for the next 10 years.

A complete count is essential to Monterey County for schools, roads, housing, health services, and political representation at all levels of government. For each person not counted, more than $2,000 in federal aid in Monterey County will be lost annually. If just 1% of California residents are not counted, California will lose over $770 million in annual federal funding.

Ensuring an accurate count will take a lot of effort and can be a daunting task in Monterey County with its size and rural populations, which is why the U.S. Census Bureau is hosting a jobs applications session from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 31 at the Monterey Public Library on Pacific Street.

There are groups of people that have historically been under-counted — the Census Bureau refers to them as “hard to count” — and will require significant outreach, said Rosemary Soto, a management analyst with the county’s administrative office and the lead on bringing together different city and county agencies and nonprofit service providers under the umbrella of the Complete Count Committee.

Monterey County has one of the highest hard-to-count populations in California. Out of a population of 437,907, 35% or 151,262 people live in hard-to-count areas.

Hard-to-count populations are mostly low-income communities, immigrants, indigenous communities, the homeless, people of color and children ages 0-5, according to the Community Foundation for Monterey County, which is a part of the outreach effort.

“Not counting someone doesn’t mean they’re not here,” said Dan Baldwin, president and chief executive of the Community Foundation. “Loss of funding because of under-counting means California and Monterey County won’t have resources to implement programs for the full complement of people in need.”

With the thousands of immigrants living in the county, alleviating their fear of the government while watching U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid homes and even making arrests at the Monterey County Courthouse will be difficult, if not impossible. Historically one-third of Monterey County residents are never counted.

“We are working hard because we don’t want that prediction to come true,” Soto said.

Neither immigration nor citizenship status are questions on the Census survey. The purpose of the Census is to count residents, regardless of who the residents are, said Vanessa Moreno with the Los Angeles Regional Census Center.

“We would like to disseminate information on how to take the Census to prevent an under-count of children, people experiencing homelessness and immigrants in the area,” Moreno said. “We want to share resources about how to take the Census in other languages and for the first time ever people are invited to answer online.”

The possibility of including the citizenship question is still expected to suppress participation within immigrant communities despite the June 27 Supreme Court ruling to exclude it. To encourage immigrant populations, the Census survey will be presented in 13 languages, Soto said.

Another sector of the hard-to-count populations are veterans.

“I didn’t realize many veterans have a fear of providing information to the government,” Soto said, “They say, ‘I’m done; I just want to live my life.’”

Among the efforts the Complete Count Committee is making is establishing kiosks in 36 locations around the county that will enable people to access laptops to fill out the 10-minute survey online. The challenge will be the homeless population who in addition to fearing the government won’t have access to the information they need to fill out surveys.

In addition to the online service, surveys can be conducted over the phone and through the mail.

The three key partners — the county, Monterey-based Community Foundation and the Salinas-based Center for Community Advocacy — will be pulling everyone together on Feb. 7 to ensure everyone is on the same page prior to the March 12 start. The effort includes some 20 nonprofits who have received pass-through funding from the Community Foundation for work on the Census.

“It’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck outreach,” Soto said. She expects a few hundred volunteers to contribute to the effort.

Moreno said thousands of workers will be hired along the Central Coast, but the exact count won’t be known until after April 30 when workers start knocking on doors of the homes that did not respond through the other avenues. Wages will be between $21 and $23 an hour, she said.

Online applications are also available at www.2020census.gov/jobs.