In Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, the bureau has already hired hundreds of people and is looking to hire more than 500 more, officials said.

If you’re looking for a part-time job that pays well over minimum wage, the U.S. Census Bureau is hiring. And at a time of historically low unemployment, the federal agency is struggling to fill a half million temporary jobs nationwide.

The Census Bureau is looking for people to help with the 2020 census, the once-a-decade count of everyone living in the United States. While the bureau needs office clerks to help with the count, most of the openings are for enumerators, the people who visit homes where no one has filled out the census form online or by mail.

In Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes alone, the bureau has already hired hundreds of people and is looking to hire more than 500 more, officials said.

The bureau is looking for people who are courteous, professional and not hesitant about knocking on a stranger’s door and starting a conversation, said spokeswoman Lindy Studds. It also wants people who are familiar with the places where they will be working, Studds said.

“Ideally we want to hire people either from within the community they’re going to work or to have worked in that community because they’ll be better received when they go knock on the door,” she said. “That gives them a leg up, if they’ve already had an association with that community in some way.”

Pay for enumerators varies from place to place, according to the Census Bureau’s website. In rural parishes, you could expect to make $14.50 to $15.50 an hour for 20 to 25 hours a week; in the cities, it’s as much as $19. There’s reimbursement for mileage and other expenses, too.

Census director Stephen Dillingham has referred to the decennial census as the country’s largest peacetime mobilization of people. The last time around, in 2010, the country was struggling to emerge from the Great Recession, and plenty of people were looking for part-time work, Studds said.

With the national unemployment rate now at 3.5%, the lowest in 50 years, the Census Bureau anticipates more difficulty filling the jobs this time around.

One concern is that applicants will accept a census job, then not take it when something better comes along. As a result, the bureau is seeking more applicants — five or more for every job it hopes to fill — so it has an adequate pool to choose from.

“I don’t know if any other employer in the country is recruiting 2.7 million people,” Timothy Olson, associate director of field operations, said at a press conference in October to kick off the hiring effort. “But I can tell you it’s a big job.”

Even more challenging than attracting enough applicants is finding bilingual ones. Of the 900,000 applicants the Census Bureau had on file in October, about 20% were bilingual, Olson said.

“We need people that speak the languages of the neighborhoods that they’re going to be working in,” he said.

For more information about Census 2020 jobs, or to apply for one, go to 2020census.gov/en/jobs or call 1-855-JOB-2020. The Census Bureau will take applications through the end of January, and perhaps longer, Studds said. Those who are hired will go through paid training before being put to work.

The census forms will be available in mid-March, and Census Day is April 1. Enumerators will begin visiting homes that haven’t responded in May.