CLEVELAND, Ohio - The U.S. Census Bureau ramped up preparation for census 2020 this spring with the opening of regional offices Thursday in Akron and Cleveland.

The Cleveland office will coordinate field staff, training and other administrative tasks throughout Cuyahoga County. The Akron office will handle Summit County and east to the Pennsylvania border, including Geauga, Lake and Portage counties.

The work in Medina and Lorain counties will be coordinated from an office in Mansfield.

The Census Bureau is still seeking to hire hundreds of temporary workers for a variety of jobs, including follow-up visits to households that don’t return their census forms. Pay for enumerators differs by county, ranging regionally from $16 an hour in Portage County to $22.50 an hour in Cuyahoga County. Applications can be submitted at census.gov/en/jobs.html.

The Census Bureau will begin mailing notices on March 12. Most people in initial mailings will receive instructions on how to fill out the forms online. Paper forms will go to targeted areas with older populations or where people are less likely to have internet access. Then, starting April 8, paper forms will be mailed to all households that have not yet responded.

Census officials, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish and a variety of community leaders spoke during the ceremonial opening of the downtown Cleveland office of the need get everyone comfortable with the idea of filling out the census form. Taxpayer funding for a variety of programs and determination of federal and state political districts depend on population counts.

Budish said he fears the area was undercounted 10 years ago.

“There is so much hanging in the balance. Millions of dollars. Billions of dollars,” Budish said. “We need to get our fair share.”

Government officials are coordinating efforts with community groups and businesses to spread information about the census, including the fact that under federal law, personal information cannot be shared with any government agency outside of the Census Bureau.

The census form, shown below, contains nine questions for the first person in the household, and fewer questions concerning others.

Sample 2020 Census form.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. Find other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral or use this link for other census 2020 coverage.

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